Wednesday, March 17. 2010'NBN2' Pricing No Clearer Now It's 'Published'John Linton A kind long term Exetel user 're-published' the 'NBN2' pricing from the Hobart Mercury on the Exetel Forum yesterday which can be found towards the bottom under "Any Thing Else Anyone Would Like To Discuss" http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=288&t=35575 This include's iinet's "suggested retail' pricing for a range of speed and download options. The published pricing, compared to current ADSL services, seems, at least to me, at best to be unexciting. The 'free' local and national telephone calls is innovative but is already offered by more than a few ADSL services and the pricing of calls to mobiles and overseas locations is wildly expensive compared to any ADSL/VoIP service. The various comments made by 'NBN2' personnel as reported here: doesn't make anything any clearer and, while I may not be reading it correctly, it seems to indicate that thie pricing on which iinet has based its 'retail pricing' on is simply one off 'promotional' pricing to get this 'pilot' off the ground. So if you like the pricing then give it a tick and if you don't like the pricing then you can comfort yourself with the fact that it's only a pilot used to bed down the operational logistics. It will be interesting to see what Telstra now offers when it activates its fibre offerings in Tasmania. So the lower end pricing from iinet is uncompetitive with ADSL2 and the higher end pricing that gets you the 'head line 100mbps speed' is way beyound any of the current high end ADSL2 plans available from any number of ISPs....and also beyond the budgets of 90% of current ADSL users. A totally expected result.....and given the disclaimer that this pricing won't apply in the future beyond this pilot program nothing can be read into this particular political stunt - purely intended (by its crass timing) to help Labor at next Saturday's State election and the coming Federal election. I suppose the other disappointment in the brief details announced and published is the fact that, without a shadow of an apology for misleading the Australian electorate by even more blatant lying than usual, we have the 100 mbps service to 90% of Australians suddenly downgraded to a 25 mbps in an unknown number of places with the off the cuff statement that "25 mbps is the fastest speed in some parts of Tasmania"........and presumably other parts of Australia? So has the 100 mbps national network become a mixed speed network with 25 mbps being functionally no better than the current ADSL2 services available NOW at half the cost without ripping off the taxpayers in an attempt to win a second term at the trough? As the old joke goes: "How do you know when Krudd is lying?....his lips move." A more efficient ISP than iinet may well provide the 'NBN2' services at less unrealistic prices than iinet is being reported as offering - presumably as any prices 'announced' today are so premature that iinet can only have done that for publicity purposes and will change them downwards as the actual delivery date for services becomes a reality. Using iinets ADSL2 pricing as an example other ISPs may well offer pricing at ADSL2 type rates rather than the published rates. Similarly it will be interesting to see what Telstra come up with when, for purposes only known to themselves, they offer high speed (or perhaps that should be super fast speed as their publicity machine describes it) in Hobart later this financial year and well before the first 'NBN2' customer is activated. Will Telstra decide to compete on price or will the ACCC protect the 'NBN2' from "competition"? I guess the spectre of Telstra's fibre abilities, already in place to some 1,000,000 plus residences makes the 'NBN2' a lemon in any realistically priced 'war' and Telstra's current pricing of that fibre offering can only be seen as a 'furphy' put in place to allow it to take a wait and see attitude to what the government monopoly would try and get away with. Did/does Telstra truly believe that a residential user would really pay over $A200.00 per month for, effectively, internet services? Even the most jaundiced of observers must have come to the conclusion that they had no intention of actually providing services until the 'NBN2' showed it's hand? Or did Telstra completely lose the plot? and spend more money rolling out fibre than the cobbled together group of third parties did for the government? It would almost be worth the price of the ticket if Telstra decides to go down the path of vicious competitor rather than just roll over. Of course the "Telstra Problem" cannot be addressed for some time to come and this article points out one view of why it was never going to be easy to do:
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Hey John, The first link (to the forums) is linking to your blog admin instead it seems. Just a heads up.
Comment (1)
Not quite right today John. If you were in Melbourne, Sydney etc you'd be right, but there's a number of reasons this looks quite good in Tasmania.
1. Very few exchanges even have non-Telstra DSLAMs to be offered across spectrum sharing services in Tassie, and I've never seen Naked ADSL available in Tas, so even if you can get non-Telstra ADSL, take $30 a month off the price for the line rental that Telstra wants you to pay and you're at $20-$30 a month for internet and you're getting a hell of a lot more for that money than you get for that much from any ISP. I view my Exetel ADSL1 connection that's down there as costing $70 a month for 1500kbit/12GB/not counted since I can't get it without the phone (which I don't want). Whereas in Melbourne I'm also getting 120GB with no rental for $59.99 a month - Exetel had no capacity where my place is - so while in Melbourne it doesn't look like a good deal, it looks a lot better in that marketplace. 2. RIMs. There's lots of them. Areas like Gungahlin in the ACT and Kingston in Tas come to mind, and you just aren't getting anything that isn't resold Telstra Wholesale. Not to mention the increasing number of areas where exchanges are capacity limited. 3. It's not really surprising that when these ISPs are overpriced for ADSL they'll be overpriced for fibre. They don't look any more overpriced than their usual offerings. Have you given much thought to what you would be able to supply in Opticomm estates etc as an idea for what you might be able to do for the NBN? As you well know, the NBN doesn't really make sense in many places around Australia. But there's also a hell of a lot that it does make sense because Telstra can provide cr*p services and they have no risk of competitive entry and do not need to upgrade as a result. Does anyone seriously think they're going to finish the job anyway? If I was NBNCo, I wouldn't be going anywhere near places where there's a bunch of ISPs with DSLAMs in the exchange, and Optus and Telstra HFC cable...these are the areas where there's no need for the NBN, and while high population density, it's going to be tough to get a ROI because your competitors can undercut you with their sunk investment and you can't respond when you've got to keep your prices consistent nationally. Comment (1)
Hi John,
Just to let you know the link to your forums is pointing to the Serendipity Administration Suite. Comment (1)
Thank you - it does that on occasions and I don't know how to fix it.
Comments (5)
Thank you - it's a bug I don't know how to fix.
I've deleted it and used text. Comments (5)
Throughout your post you refer to iinet, but it seems Internode is the ISP offering the service?
Comments (2)
My eyes must have faded even faster than I thought....I thought at the bottom of the pricing on the RHS it said:
"provided by iinet". Comments (5)
Oh I see now - the press release is from Internode and the article is about iinet. My mistake. I guess the obvious question is: has Exetel been given the opportunity to buy wholesale NBN2 in Tasmania? Will you take it up?
Comments (2)
We always investigate any opportunity that is available to us.
Comments (5)
"... there's a number of reasons this looks quite good in Tasmania."
Looks good where I live too for the same reasons. ADSL2 only available from Telstra here. So high speed Internet and phone for around $70 is very attractive. Comment (1)
Conroy ignores order to release broadband report
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/17/2848505.htm Comment (1)
I'm not sure I quite agree with your comments on 25mbps from NBN. Without knowing where 25mbps is being provided, how can you compare to ADSL2? Isn't is more likely the places where 25mbps NBN is provided is a long way from an exchange that doesn't have ADSL2 anyway? And wouldn't you need to be pretty close to the exchange to get that kind of speed from ADSL2?
So while your surprise about them supplying 25mbps might be justified, the comparison ust doesn't seem to add up. Comment (1)
In all the millions of words written about the 'NBN2' since Krudd came up with it - where is there any mention of a speed less than 100 mbps?
The man's dishonesty knows no bounds. Comments (5)
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