Wireless vs fixed broadband, the value war.
September 20th, 2007
If you’re onto a good thing, stick to it.
We all know this saying, and it rears its head occasionally to remind you of its wisdom, but when it surfaces in your life twice in one go, and both within the realms of telecommunications service providers, its time to take note!
I have been with iiNet as my primary broadband service provider almost since the word go, their high-speed network, excellent service and good value for money make for a potent combination, all until recently.
My family and I recently moved house to the Blue Mountains and were advised to disconnect our internet connection rather than relocating as it would save us $30 or so, this seemed odd, but ok, we all know that service providers like to make a buck off every possible situation, so hey, we obliged. In between relocations, we went on holidays and upon coming home and moving in, we found out that the great value $49 per month, high speed plan we were on, had been replaced with an $79 per month plan!! Our conveniently recommended ‘disconnection’ rather than ‘relocation’ had cost us $30 per month, and by moving to the mountains, we can only get 8Mb instead of the luxurious 24Mb speeds we’ve been used to! We shouldn’t have disconnected, if we had have stayed connected we would only have to sacrifice the speed. Friends of ours down the road, have been on an outdated $59 per month plan with iiNet for 5 years and receive unlimited downloads and are getting upgraded to 8Mb for free!!
Now, if the increase in monthly cost wasn’t enough, the three week period to get our internet connection up and running, and the numerous phone calls that needed to be made, just rubbed salt into the wound!
Now, if this would be a private household internet connection, the time lag wouldn’t be too problematic, but when your home business depends on being connected, that delay equates to lost revenue and damage to your business…
Cue the saviour: Vodafone 3G
I recently upgraded my phone to the Softbank X01HT, the Japanese sister to the Aussie Dopod 838 pro. This wonderful contraption has every possible wireless data technology crammed into its relatively small footprint and allows me to play around on Vodafone’s snappy HSPDA network with email, internet, skype and video phone calls.
Having wireless high speed internet at your fingertips while your fixed line internet is being setup at low speed, has definitely saved my business!!
Even though there is no 3G coverage where we live (Blaxland seems to be the desolate, infertile strip of broadbandland!), the 1.5 hour train trip through UTMS rich western-sydney provides me ample opportunity to catch up on email, send out jobs to clients, manage websites and even partake in a spot of downloading!!
Now, the first thing that was said to me upon mentioning my wireless salvation was ‘I can’t wait to see the size of your bill after this!’
Well, even though I was advised by Vodafone staff that I would have to add a extra data plan ($5 for 15mb or so) onto my $79 per month super-cap to gain access to 3G data services (which I did not do, yet still have access 3G), I had not even reached the $500 limit of my cap!! That was even after chewing up megabytes of data throughput, and even some chunky 40MB downloads!!
Now, I know we live in a capitalistic society and businesses are out to make a buck, but I can’t justify bumping up plans by considerable amounts of money while receiving worse service, or requesting the need for additional services that are not necessary, just to make an extra million.
There’s enough money out there for all of us guys, when did it become necessary to sacrifice service and value, for greed?
Cheers
Ravian
www.arcaeda.com