Telstra increases wireless broadband allowances

 

Analyst says premium now justifiable.

Telstra has increased the data allowances of its pre-paid wireless broadband offerings.

Effective tomorrow, customers recharging their pre-paid services would receive up to three times more data at no additional cost.

Telstra's new data allowances are listed against its previous offerings below. All data allowances expire after 30 days.

Recharge amount Previous allowance New allowance
$20 150MB 225MB
$30 225MB 400MB
$40 300MB 1GB
$50 625MB 2GB
$60 750MB 3GB
$80 3.5GB 4GB
$100 6GB 6GB

Telstra also introduced two new options that offered longer expiry periods. A 3GB allowance that cost $130 could be used for 90 days. A 4GB allowance that cost $150 could be used for 180 days.

The announcement followed Telstra's changes to its post-paid plans in January, when it doubled the data allowance of its entry-level, $29.95 plan to 400MB.

According to Ovum analyst Nathan Burley, the new announcement aligned Telstra's pre-paid offerings with its post-paid plans.

It made Telstra's mobile broadband offerings more competitive, and Telstra's pricing model "justifiable", he said.

"Telstra, for a considerable amount of time, has been charging a premium because of the differentiators it provides like network coverage, higher speeds and network performance," Burley told iTnews.

"Previously, Telstra thought it could charge a substantial premium. The premium is now a smaller percentage and is probably now justifiable."

Burley said that wireless broadband was a key growth area for Telstra, which continued to lead the market.

Ovum found Telstra to have 47 percent share in the non-handset-inclusive mobile broadband market, followed by Optus with 28 percent.


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Telstra increases wireless broadband allowances
"In other words, Telstra will charge you $29.95 a month for ads, considering ads make up 60% of data traffic in any well known sites. Anything with Flash video is data hungry in today's norm."
By cootified
 
 
 
Comments: 5
ray73864
Feb 22, 2010 4:56 PM
the 2 new offers (90 days and 180 days) actually starts to make Telstra look good, for where i go, Telstra is the only option, which really sucked seeing as how pretty much all ISP's that use the Optus network give 15GB (or there abouts) for $100 that lasts anywhere between 6months and 12months.
singo79
Feb 22, 2010 6:58 PM
Now all they need to do is revamp their Mobile Data packs and I'll be extremely pleased. It is very pleasant to see Telstra getting more in touch with the current market and moving away from their ridiculously priced internet packages. Of course they still aren't great packages, but at least they have come more towards the market norm then what they use to be.
Tailgator
Feb 22, 2010 9:28 PM
Funny. I use Telstra pre-paid mobile. In the last weeek I received an SMS informing me that connection fees were increasing by approx 20% and call costs by 1c per 30 sec block. Did the connection costs to Telstra increase all of a sudden?
Rest assured that corporations like Telstra are calculating to the nth degree the profit margins from various revenue generators, give with one hand and take with the other.
scan06disk
Feb 22, 2010 10:18 PM
@Tailgator That's one reason why their customer satisfaction rating is 66.6% !, now with the data increase it might go UP to a massive 66.7% ! lol
cootified
Feb 23, 2010 3:42 PM
In other words, Telstra will charge you $29.95 a month for ads, considering ads make up 60% of data traffic in any well known sites. Anything with Flash video is data hungry in today's norm.
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