A bit of info for all you digital travellers.
In January I upgraded my CDMA mini-max mobile data modem to the new NextG network equivalent device. This was called the Telstra Turbo modem and is a little
orange usb device.
It worked a treat and I was very happy with it. The old CDMA one was very good and this one was just as good only faster. I signed up on the 20 hours for $49 timed data plan on the old device and my understanding was that the new device would be on the same plan. When I changed it over the sales bloke put it all in the computer, presented me with several pages of the usual Telstra guff which I signed and off I went. (I knew I should have read it more closely!)
This month I got the bill and found that the guy had stuffed up and had placed me on the $49 volume data based plan that has a monthly data allowance of just 200 megabytes. No worries I thought - I will just go to Telstra
shop and get them to switch me onto the correct plan.
Well - on 22nd Feb Telstra withdrew the time based plans on the Turbo Modems and you can only have this device on a volume based plan:
$59 gives you 200Mb a month
$89 gives you 500Mb a month
$109 gives you 1Gb a month
$179 gives you 2Gb a month
Because they stuffed it up back in January and put me on the wrong plan they now could not change me to what I originally wanted (the 20 hours plan) as they cannot retrospectively connect me to a withdrawn plan.
This brings me to the main point of my topic. Why would you build a high speed data network and produce posters that say "Download 1 Megabyte in 7 seconds!" and then include such pitful data allowances in the monthly plans? To maximise customer revenue of course!
On the $59 plan (which is getting to the limits of affordability for most normal people) you can technically download your entire month's allowance in under 10 minutes! I did a pretty major virus update and it was 27 megabytes in one go. That is over 10% of my monthly allowance gone before I even open my web browser!!!
As I said - it is like building a 6 lane freeway and then saying that you can only drive on it for 1 hour a month before we whack you with MASSIVE fees.
Once you use your 200Mb you then get charged 25 cents for every additional megabyte that you download or upload. You could rack up some serious charges pretty quick.
After pointing this out to the Telstra
Shop manager he suggested that if I wanted to stick with a time based plan then I should move over to the Bigpond Wireless Broadband plans (also a part of Telstra) as they still do the 20 hour plan, however the price increased on 22 Feb from $49 a month to $54.95.
"OK" I says - "seems like a solution. Move me over to Bigpond".
In order to do that we need to change your data device to the Bigpond model. It is the same device but has different software drivers and stuff. It also has an upfront cost of $299. After I turned blue and then purple..... I politely told him what I thought of paying another $299 and he politely waived this charge for me (though I was stuck with the extra $5 a month!).
The upshot is that I now have the Bigpond USB wireless data modem (it is blue in colour whereas the Telstra Mobile one was
orange) and am all operational again on a timed plan where I can download to my hearts content within the allotted time at really good download speeds.
When any of you digitally enhanced travellers are assessing your options for mobile data I suggest you look at the time based plans if you intend to do "burst" type data sessions (pull up in a place with reception and
logon to quickly download/upload emails and stuff) and only look at the data volume based plans if you are the "always on" type that has the connection going for hours and hours but don't upload or download huge amounts of data.
Hopefully my experiences help someone in not getting screwed by Telstra.
Great product but BOY do they make you pay for it!!!!! If they made it more sensibly priced maybe more people might actually use it and they would make just as much money!
Cheers
Muddy