ISP Internode ditches Telstra in terabyte fight
- 06 September, 2010 08:38
- Comments 20
A fortnight after first signalled by the service provider’s managing director, Simon Hackett, Internode will offer ADSL2+ plans with a terabyte of monthly quota, but only on exchanges served by its own DSLAM equipment.
The new “T-Shirt” plans come after Hackett moved to qualm concerns that Internode hadn’t met competition presented by TPG, iiNet and iPrimus in the emerging battle for the highest monthly quotas. At the time, he cited problems with pricing agreements with Telstra Wholesale, over which the service provider still operates for some exchanges where it does not used its own hosted equipment, or DSLAMs from Optus.
“We're currently waiting on some answers to important and relevant questions from various suppliers over the next few weeks, before we can fully determine and release our next plan revisions,” he told users on the Whirlpool forum
The newly released plans appear to have forgone those negotiations, as the plans will only be available for those users served by Internode’s own Agile equipment. The service provider’s subscribers on the Optus Wholesale network will be eligible for plans up to 300GB monthly quotas, while those on the Telstra Wholesale network are not yet eligible for the new plans.
Hackett said in a blog that only existing Easy and Naked Easy plans would be “grandfathered” or eliminated as a result of the new offerings.
A total of five different tiered monthly quotas are offered under the new “T-Shirt” plans, ranging from 100GB a month to a full terabyte, the latter of which is the most expensive in the market at $159.95 without bundling. The quotas comprise both uploads and downloads but are not split into peak or off-peak periods during the day.
Both iiNet and Internode expressed anger over recent cuts to Telstra broadband pricing, which the smaller service providers claimed undercut the incumbent’s own wholesale pricing. The two providers jointly submitted a letter of appeal to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in retaliation, though no action has been taken as yet.
“Matching those BigPond ADSL2+ prices through the Telstra wholesale access path would send any provider broke,” Internode’s carrier relations manager, John Lindsay, said in a statement at the time.
Internode currently operates its own active DSLAM equipment at 164 exchanges nationally - with plans for a further 25 - though has already reached capacity at 12 exchanges. For those it can’t service with its own equipment, the provider relies on Optus’ network of 370 exchanges or Telstra’s 2782 exchanges equipped with ADSL2+ capabilities.
Hackett told Whirlpool users that negotiations with Telstra Wholesale were ongoing but that plans would only be revised once a deal had been reached.
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Comments
barry
To bad the rest of us plebs stuck on telstra wholesale gear continue to get ripped off.
Telstra are Aholes... they need to be fined the amount equal to their profit from all the people that switched to them for the new ridiculously good pricing...
Everyone else has to suffer because they won't bring down their wholesale price until the ACCC kick them up the bum..
Ridiculous.
Mike
I look forward to the day of having Labour's NBN installed. Telstra can then goto hell!
Fred
A terabyte of data is enormous...
Didn't netspace have plans like L, M and XL a few years back when I was with them.
I hope that there is enough badwidth to go around.
Noel
I have trouble using 15 gig a month. Why would anyone want a terrabyte?
Lufkin
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/20/2931852.htm
Too bad Telstra already have their hand in it
RS
It's not all about you Noel.
I'm not a big internet user either, but in 3 weeks, I have used up 76GB of my 100GB plan!
Admittedly, 1 terrabyte would be way too much for me too, but then, it's not about me either!
BunchofCrooks
Is there ANY way a residential user can use 1TB without stealing stuff ????
BB McReeve
Is a terbyte like a turd-byte?
lolyou
@BunchofCrooks
Yes there are plenty of ways you closed minded person you. Seriously pull your head out of the sand. You can't think of significant bandwidth hogs so people must be pirating things. Yeah no.
I'm on 130GB as it is per month and could easily use 1TB if I had it.
StopWhinging
Internode and iiNet complaining that they'd go broke reselling Telstra wholesale trying to compete with Telstra BigPond... Why don't they stop whinging and just build more of their own exchanges rather than making a dime off of someone else's exchange while they complain about how they are entitled to do it and it's unfair.
If people truly want to break up the monopoly they'll have to actually build their own infrastructure. IMO it's unfair to say Telstra should be cheaper, or that they deserve what they get for being greedy whilst at the same time complaining when they do actually lower their prices that it's unfair because now it's less than what you are charging.
Imagine paying to build the infrastructure, and being forced to sell it whole sale to your competitors for less than what you're allowed to sell it at. You cannot compete on price, by law. But at the same time there is no incentive for the competitors to ever build their own, it's more profitable for them to piggy-back and this perpetuates the situation.
Imagine Holden being forced, by law to sell their Commodores to Toyota so they can re-badge and re-sell at a profit, because they are the largest Australian car manufacturer. Would that be fair? If it's cheaper for Toyota to buy a Commodore and re-badge it why would they bother making a Corolla sedan?
w-e
That would be a fair point StopWhinging if it was telstra that built most of those exchanges, but it us the taxpayer that funded the infrastructure up until ~1999. Why should they be given such a huge competitive advantage ~by us the consumer~ to crush any competition in the market? Privatization was a terrible idea.
screenbeard
@StopWhinging - competitors cannot build exchanges because they can't roll out the cables they need to connect to customer's premises. If they could we'd have fibre everywhere and Telstra would be forced to compete fairly. As it is, they own the wires, so they own the network, and there's not a thing competitors can do about it.
Asmodai
@ lolyou (number 9)
There are so many examples you can't cite any?
Give me a break. 1 TB plans are for torrent hounds. There are only so many times people can use the 'linux distros' excuse. Considering Node mirrors most Steam content, has an extensive array of game client, media and patch files via it's gamesonnet site, and apps etc from Major Geeks and Sourceforge mirrors, I don't buy it.
Streamed content? 1 TB would last you 16 days of 24/7 6 Mbps streaming...
Uploads (since the quota is typically up and down)? Doubtful with the low up speeds ADSL provides.
What else, you going to blow a few hundred gig on Skype and IM's? X D
Seriously, I don't know why torrenters are shy about just admitting they're going to be hitting warez on these plans. That's what they are designed for...
Mark
Come on, internode. Put some infrastructure in Cairns already. I've been with internode for years, and only recently i've been looking to go with someone else because Internode no longer offer competitive value or speeds (i live in FNQLD).
The only thing/s keeping me with internode is the free (unmetered) content, and the fact that my internode email address is my primary email.
Pharaoh
The problem is that the majority of people (see the number of exchanges owned by Node, Telstra and Optus in the article) are stuck with Telstra Wholesale, and the only even vaguely competitive price/GB for them is through BigPond. It'll never be profitable for another ISP to put in a DSLAM where I live because I'm not in Sydney or Melbourne, so I'm stuck with this until the ACCC bitchslaps Telstra or the NBN gets built. The reason we're whinging is that Telstra is extorting money from the majority of Aussie internet users for subpar service, generally an order of magnitude more expensive per GB, and there's nothing we as users can do about it.
Actarian
If you are using 50 - 100 gig a month, the only legitimate non business reason for this is gaming. Everything else would most likely be illegal downloads. I presume the movie studios would like to know who is on 'Terabyte Plans' .....
D Newman
@Actarian a big statement, you appear to presume to know eveyones habits, there is a number of other reasons why you would use more than 50 gig a month.
My hobby of film editing adding sound/effects for a local film group causes me to do large transfers both up and down.
Plus even though you discounted it, I do work from home at least once a week, I will not discount it as it will be a growing trend, not huge, but never the less something that is growing, more so I believe if a carbon price is brought in, as ways to get carbon credits for a company will be explored in every way.
Plus I now run a number of progams and apps through cloud, which is a steady small trickle in itself, by the end of the month it all adds up.......I,m between 30 and 60 gig a month and I,m not "gaming" at all.
Stu
Disclaimer: I run a small ISP in New Zealand.
WIthout exception (and I mean zero), every residential user on our network who has exceeded a threshold of 150GB monthly data by volume has been primarily file-sharing through peer-to-peer like protocols or managing downloads from hosted servers such as graboid.com etc.
I am willing to believe that scenarios can be conjured up that have hypothetical home users burning through terabytes of data legally. However, I do not believe that these scenarios are widespread, nor do I believe that with the current state of content distribution on the Internet, that such a volume of data is related to legal (i.e. non copyright-infringing, non-pirated) material. The scenario where terabytes of data monthly are downloaded by residential users overwhelmingly involves illegitimate use.
It is almost at the point where we have to recognize that the individuals who do engage in this behaviour are outliers, that this is not normal usage and that it does reflect addictive behaviour i.e.a compulsion to acquire. My recommendation to ISPs is to charge according to the load on the network from such users e.g. dedicated bandwidth charge - they will pay proportionally more than normal users, essentially because they have to.
gvinpin
People with no imagination...
My mum does not speak English and I download a lot of TV shows, news etc. from our country of origin. It is legal in that country.
angry @ internode
Thanks Simon Hackett and Internode for the slap in the face to a loyal 3yo customer on ADSL2, paying $80pm for 30G on the Tweed exchange, because you would rather give customers on your already existing DSLAMS rather than pay the cost to install new ones. Great business sense yeah. You guys sure need a kick up the backside and l hope the TIO gives you one. It's disgusting.
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