TPG first announced plans for an “unlimited” broadband service way back in September 2012. That deal is finally available, but as with any purportedly unlimited deal, it pays to read the fine print carefully.
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TPG’s cheapest offer is $59.99 per month, for the slowest-speed 12Mbps download/1Mbps upload deal. (If you’re in a good ADSL2+ area, note that you can probably score better speeds than that already). $69.99 a month keeps the same speed but adds line rental with unlimited landline calls; $79.99 is the same deal with free calls to mobiles.
If you want faster speed from the NBN, $89.99 scores unlimited access for 100Mbps download/40Mbps upload. Again, you can add another $10 for the landline calls deal, or $20 for the landline/mobile comobo.
One big change since the idea of the plan was first announced is that you’re no longer locked into a contract. The trade-off? A $129.95 set-up fee. (To our mind, that’s a fair trade.)
TPG isn’t the first plan to offer “unlimited” NBN access — AusBBS did it back in May last year. It’s certainly not a terrible deal if you’re in an area where TPG offers it, though the future of how the NBN will expand remains uncertain, untimed and uncosted.
Comments
21 responses to “TPG’s Unlimited NBN Plan Is Finally Here”
Like any unlimited offer … TPG still includes the usual “excessive usage” and “fair use” clauses in the small print. But they fail to specify what that means or where the bar is set. Is this not one for the ACCC as it provides them with carte blanche to suspend service whenever they like?
I don’t see any fine print regarding “excessive usage” or “fair use” anywhere, so there shouldn’t be any problems. The only disadvantage I see in these plans are that they don’t provide static IP addresses like the ADSL2+ plans.
FYI I’ve had TPG ADSL/2 for about 5 years now on an “unlimited” account, I do about 200-350GB per month and never had any issues with them capping speeds.
Our household routinely pulled 500-700gb/month out of our TPG unlimited ADSL2+ connection and still pull circa 300gb from it. No capping, just low traffic priority.
That’s not bad pricing! $100 for 100Mbps 500gb/500gb from iiNet, and $145 for 500gb from Telstra.
Telstra CIS for NBN 500GB says $113 for a standalone service.
Ah yep, you can’t get it without bundling a useless phone line though unfortunately either way. Also realised it’s not 100, it’s 25Mbps.
Nope, according to the CIS it includes a Telstra Voice Essential service for that price. $20/mo extra for 100mbps (“speed boost”), though, but there are sometimes promotions to get it for $10/mo.
I’m hoping by the time NBN is rolled out here iinet will have better plans, best combination of a quality ISP who actually care about consumer rights.
Now all we need is the NBN..
So how does this equate to 2024 pricing when the actual NBN might be available to the rest of us? Or is TPG hoping that Tamworth and Tasmania all sign up.
This was better than expected. I thought you’d get a 56k modem with a pack of AFL chewing gum (with a player from the 1996 Brisbane Bears for the trading card).
Mr. Turnbull, you’ve outdone yourself again!
That $69.99 is what I’m paying now for unlimited ADSL2+ + unlimited landline calls, but I only get 4Mbps, so I’d jump at this in a heartbeat if possible.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible and not likely to be anytime soon, since if I ‘really cared’ I’d spend $115/mo on the Optus cable that’s connected to the (rented) house (or move somewhere else, of course).
Pity that most of us will never be able to take advantage of these deals. Now that the NBN has been scrapped in favour of the “whatever spare parts we (read: Telstra) have lying around” rollout, neither TPG nor any other ISP can guarantee speeds approaching this, only an “up to” offer. It’ll be basically what we have now: ADSL2+ is 24/5mbit!!….. except if you don’t happen to live right on top of the exchange, in which case it’s more like 3-4/0.5-1mbits. HFC/FTTN is 50/20+mbits!!… except if you’re either in a) a highly congested area with HFC or b) living more than 50m away from a node with FTTN…. in which case you might get 25/5mbit if you’re lucky.
NBN Co are currently conducting FTTN and FTTB trials. Lets see what the results of these are before jumping to any conclusions.
Many people get up to 100mb/s on HFC. The drop off point for VDSL is actually more like 500m, but it all depends on the quality of the copper. If you’re living in an apartment complex with short runs of copper <150m you should have access to all 5 NBN speed tiers (12/1-100/40) with FTTB.
So i use to whinge with everyone else about how I was never getting the NBN, but now I’m building a house in an enabled area would I be a bad sport if I said SUCK IT!!
What’s TPG’s backhaul like on the NBN?
Their ADSL stuff is utter crap. You sync at 8-15Mbs, yet only get 1-2Mbs in the real world.
I think you maybe confused.
I’m on TPG, I sync at 13 MegaBITS per sec (Mb) which translates to around 1.5 MegaBYTES (MB) per sec.
If you lived literally next door to an exchange, the max speed you’d get would be 2.5MB/s.
No, I’m not confused.
The sync speed for the ADSL connection reported on the modem do not match up with the real world speeds, especially during peak times.
I’m not talking about megabits and megabytes here. I’m talking about how much of that sync speed is actually backed up with backhaul capacity from the exchange to the POP (and upwards in the chain).
Like I said initially, you can get a sync speed of say 8Mb/s (8 megaBITS a second), yet during peak time only achieve speeds comparable to 1-2Mb/s (megaBITS a second) a second, aka 128-258 KB/s (KiloBYTES a second.).
Wow. Ok, thats pretty damn bad!
I don’t see any drop offs like that. I’d be calling them up and having a whinge.
I’d be more interested in this if I was getting FTTP instead of FTTN. No point even upgrading to fibre when the copper run is still going to be a few hundred metres. Buy it cheap, buy it twice.
It looks like a pretty decent plan and we’ll probably move to such a thing when NBN is installed at work in the coming months as we are with TPG for the ADSL connection at the moment.