Telstra really, really wants you on a bundle — and if you’re not, it’s going to put up your line rental charges from October. Also: Telstra is killing off its little-used Tribe social networking aggregation service.
Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
In a post on its Exchange blog, Telstra confirmed that line rental charges are going up on most of its standalone plans:
From 1 October 2013, customers on our HomeLine Complete, Plus, Advanced and Together Plans will receive increases of $2 per month on their monthly access charge. HomeLine Part will increase by $1 per month.
Business customers aren’t exempt either; “a number” of BusinessLine plans are going up by between $1 and $2 a month.
The changes won’t apply if you have a newer bundle (which might include mobile, broadband or pay TV services). While bundles can potentially offer savings to customers, their advantage to the provider is arguably greater: you’re much less likely to switch if you have multiple services with a single company.
Telstra is killing off its older Telstra Rewards bundles from the beginning of November, and will contact customers on those plans to transit them to a new service. If you’re out of contract, be wary about signing up for a new deal without checking elsewhere.
A final piece of news from the post: Telstra is killing off Tribe, its social media aggregation service, from 13 September. The big potential advantage of Tribe was that you didn’t have to pay for the data it used when accessing Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, but the fact you had to use a separate app meant it was never widely adopted. According to Telstra, usage has dropped by more than 60 per cent since smartphones became dominant.
Comments
5 responses to “Telstra Increases Line Rental Charges, Kills Tribe”
This is the most appropriate photograph.
Haha. Maybe the symbolism is a big fat ‘in yo face!’ from Telstra to its customers.
No mention of Homeline Budget, which is presumably what a very large number of ADSL customers are on.
God I can’t wait for NBN so I don’t need a landline.
….. you should just get telstra cable … standalone lol
naked dsl.