Opinion: Thanks for nothing

For that money you only get a maximum 256Kbps connection. Hmm. So it would take you more than 100 hours of non-stop downloading to consume your 10GB allowance. Uhuh.

For $10 more money, they will let you connect at 512Kbps. So you could theoretically hit your limit in around three days. Of constant downloading. Right. Such a bargain!

Okay, so Telstra wants more money and offers you a lower download limit but their Next G service does connect at up to 7Mbps.

At least that makes it possible to actually use your allowance, paltry though it may be, before the next month rolls around.

However, Unwired behaves better when you exceed your limit, by throttling you back to dial-up speeds, whereas Telstra just forces you to sell your car and house to pay your excess usage bill. We’d rather get slowed if it’s all the same to you.

But the real hope here is that Unwired’s new plans will stimulate some competition and …..oh sorry…there’s me thinking we have competition again.

Since Unwired only operates in capital cities, where you can easily get ADSL or even stark naked ADSL, they’re really competing with serious broadband so there’s no real contest at all.

And since nobody would want to use wireless broadband unless they can’t get anything else, that leaves Next G, the only service that works where you can’t get anything else.

And last time we checked Telstra seemed well aware of that and wasn’t rushing to offer any fabulous discounts to compete with Unwired, which they don’t really need to compete with anyway, because, well, see above.

Yes folks, we’re trapped in the broadband equivalent of a Joseph Heller novel. Do you need to be insane to pay for broadband? No, not really, but it sure does help. A lot.