Has Telstra finally met its nemesis? The official launch of Virgin's broadband and home phone service today made something very clear: if Telstra thought its landline monopoly was under threat from capped mobile plans, it ain't seen nothing yet.
 Virgin Broadband's 3G modem: with a landline phone, ethernet cable and power plugged in. |
Has Telstra finally met its nemesis? The official launch of Virgin's broadband and home phone service today made something very clear: if Telstra thought its landline monopoly was under threat from capped mobile plans, it ain't seen nothing yet.
Virgin Broadband's home phone and broadband service is the first 'wireless landline' in Australia (and in fact one of the first in the world) offering clearly superior value to wired landlines.
At no up-front cost, Virgin supplies a 3G/HSDPA modem that includes a standard analogue telephone port, an ethernet port and a WiFi router. For a $60 monthly fee, you get unlimited calls to landlines nationally and unlimited free calls to Virgin Mobiles.
Calls to other mobiles (Optus/Telstra/Vodafone) or international numbers are charged at 45c per minute, in 30 second blocks (22.5c per 30 seconds, though presumably the minimum is one minute), which is the main downside, but for many people, this won't be a concern, because they'll simply use their mobile to call other mobiles (or, Virgin Mobile hopes, convince family and friends to switch to Virgin.)
But here's the kicker -- as part of your $60 fee, you get 4GB of broadband internet at average speeds of 512Kbit/s, with an upper limit of 700Kbit/s. It puts Telstra BigPond's 200MB $29.95 plan to shame, with 20 times more usage allowance and no excess usage fees (Telstra charges $150/GB once you exceed your piddling 200MB.)
Is it fair to compare Virgin's $60 plan to Telstra's $29.95 plan? Absolutely -- you can't get Telstra's plan without paying line rental tax as well of at least $20 a month, and more commonly, $30. And that's before you've made any calls.
Furthermore, renters will love the fact that you don't have to pay line connection fees, nor relocation fees if you move.
The fact that the whole thing is delivered over the Optus 3G network doesn't put you at any disadvantage (apart from the fact that your home phone won't work if there's a blackout and the modem has no power): Virgin Broadband also gives you a regular landline telephone number so that people can call you at regular landline prices, even though the calls are carried over the mobile network. You can choose to keep your existing home phone number if you want, and have that ported over to your Virgin Broadband home phone connection.
Of course, a 4GB download allowance is not enough for anyone who needs to do P2P or large downloads such as multi-disc ISOs. But let's face it -- the number of people who need large data allowances is far outweighed in multiples by the massive number of people who just want to get always-on internet for email, web and YouTube as cheaply as possible. it's those people that are always nagging us techies for advice on the best value plans, and until recently, there hasn't been a whole lot of good value plans in the sub-$30 space.
Another group that will probably find Virgin Broadband's home service attractive is companies that have staff regularly travelling around Australia who need internet access at their destination, but not necessarily while they're on the move with their laptop. Paying $60 a month is cheap compared to the $30-per-day broadband charges from hotels, and it also stacks up extremely well against other wireless broadband services. For example, Three, which has briefly held the crown of best-value mobile broadband provider, only offers 2GB for $60, and that's not including any calls.
At the Virgin Broadband press launch today, a company spokesman said that people who signed up for the home broadband service would be free to take their modem anywhere they liked and use it from a data perspective.
There is a downside to the home service though: customers are only allowed to make calls in a small radius around their registered 'home' location, because the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) requires providers who issue landline numbers to customers to ensure the service is used at its registered address. Virgin Mobile says if customers stray from their home zone with the home broadband modem and start making calls, it will ring them to query if they have changed address.
The second deal: $80 mobile cap offers $520 calls, 1GB broadband
The other package being offered by Virgin Broadband is a mobile package for people with a laptop who want access on the move. It costs $80 a month and also requires you to sign up to a two-year contract.
Subscribers to this plan get a new mobile handset -- an HSDPA Nokia 6120 -- and $520 worth of calls a month at fairly standard capped-plan rates (40c per 30 seconds with a 30c flagfall).
The deal also includes a USB laptop dongle from Belgian company Option, with a 1GB usage allowance. (Mac users will be pleased to know that the dongle works on Mac OS X, and of course it works on Windows, though there is no official Linux support.)
The main downside here, of course, is the 1GB usage limit rather than the more generous 4GB limit of the home broadband service. It remains to be seen whether it's technically possible to use the SIM card that comes with the home broadband service in another 3G device to get 4GB of usage while on the go.
Officially, Virgin Mobile says it's not possible to take the SIM card out of the home broadband modem and put it into the laptop dongle, but then again, Telstra also says it's not possible to use a BigPond Wireless desktop modem SIM card in one of their USB laptop modem dongles, which is simply not the case.
Also, the 1GB usage allowance is not shared across the laptop dongle and the phone handset -- if you want to use web and email on your phone, you need to subscribe to one of Virgin Mobile's bolt-on data packs: $5 per month for 50MB or $10 for 300MB.
True plug and play: Unwired killer?
 Unwired modem: dubbed "the rabbit" |
There's no doubt that the easiest-to-use wireless device on the Australian market until today has been the Unwired pre-WiMax modem which you simply switch on to get a connection to the network. Customers simply plug it in to their computer via ethernet or buy a separate WiFi router and share the Unwired connection around their house wirelessly.
The problem with Unwired is its coverage: although it supposedly has blanket coverage across Sydney and surrounds, the reality is that it's often not possible to get any coverage at all in apartment blocks where there are lots of brick walls. Unwired uses 3.5GHz spectrum, which doesn't penetrate buildings terribly well. As a rule of physics, the higher the radio frequency, the poorer its range and penetration.
And then there's the problem that Unwired is predominantly available in Sydney. In Melbourne, its coverage is much more limited, and it's not in other states at all.
In contrast, Optus' 3G network, on which the Virgin Broadband service runs, is a standard 2.1GHz service, which achieves considerably better in-building penetration. Optus is also looking at 900MHz (0.9GHz) for its new HSDPA network, currently being built to cover 96% of Australia's population, and if it goes with this, the Virgin Broadband service will get a terrific coverage boost.
 Virgin Broadband's home modem |
Virgin Broadband's home 3G modem/router is an undeniably superior device to the Unwired modem. It provides a virtual landline (complete with standard Telstra dialtone) and works with any regular landline phone you may have already have plugged into the wall at home, including cordless models.
Calls are not carried over VoIP -- they're circuit-switched calls carried over the Optus mobile network, so the sound quality is very good and not subject to the vagaries of TCP/IP latency and jitter that can undermine the quality of VoIP calls. In fact, even if you live outside of Optus 3G coverage, you can still get the Virgin Broadband home service and simply use it for phone calls, because the 2G network is equally capable of handling the calls. (You'll get internet access too, actually, but only at ponderously slow GPRS speed, which is generally slower than dialup.)
When the device is shipped to you, it comes with the Virgin Mobile SIM card pre-installed, so all you have to do is plug it in to power and plug in your phone and computer. There's no stuffing around with configuring usernames and passwords, PPP settings, or any of that.
The only thing that needs some configuration is the inbuilt WiFi, for which the user must obviously choose an encryption key and network name. Confoundingly, Virgin Mobile has written an excellent user manual [2.9MB PDF - shows user interface screenshots] to go with the modem that explains how to set up wireless on all your home PCs, but somehow managed to largely overlook the process of setting it up in the modem itself. Hopefully this omission will be fixed by the time the service launches in the first week of August.
Note: we've now published a full review.