Dan Warne16 July 2007, 6:29 AM
Believe it or not: some plans on Three's HSDPA wireless broadband service are now five times better value than BigPond's home ADSL service.
 Not just for road warriors: Three hopes to sell HSDPA broadband to the traditional home-user broadband market, too. |
Believe it or not: some plans on Three's HSDPA wireless broadband service are now five times better value than BigPond's home ADSL service.
Three has yet again dropped the pricing on its HSDPA wireless broadband service, now offering 1GB per month for $29 -- five times the amount Telstra offers on its comparably priced ADSL plan.
BigPond's ADSL service costs $29 for 200MB, or $49.95 for 400MB, at the slowest possible ADSL speed of 0.25Mbit/s.
In comparison, Three's HSDPA wireless broadband costs $29 for 1GB, $49 for 2GB, $69 for 3GB and $99 for 5GB. It also runs at up to 3.6Mbit/s (with real-life speeds of 0.6 - 1.5Mbit/s) in any of the telco's "video zone" coverage areas, which cover "most of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and the Gold Coast."
Three is taking a leaf from BigPond's marketing playbook, though, offering the first six months of a 24 month contract half price (equivalent to a 12.5% discount over the course of the contract.)
You can get the Huawei E220 USB modem required for the service free on the $49 2GB plan on a 24 month contract. If you're wanting to get the new $29 1GB plan, the USB modem costs $299 upfront or $10 per month on a 12 month contract, or $5 per month on a 24 month contract.
You can also get the Novatel Merlin XU870 ExpressCard at no cost upfront with the $49 2GB plan over 24 months, but again, if you're wanting to go for the $29 1GB plan, it's $399 upfront, or $20 a month on a 12 month contract or $10 a month on a 24 month contract.
The new plans provide some protection against what has always been the problem with Three's wireless broadband -- that if you roam off the Three network and onto Telstra's 2G network, you'll be slugged an additional $1.65 per megabyte on top of your monthly fee. Three now includes a small amount of roaming data allowance -- 2MB with $29 plan, 4MB with $49 plan, 6MB with $69 plan and 10MB with the $99 plan.