1TB plans: That’s huge, but who’s going to use it?
- 19 August, 2010 15:54
- Comments 9
iiNet and iPrimus brought out their 1TB broadband plans yesterday but analysts agree they won’t appeal to the mass market.
iiNet was first to offer a 1TB plan for $99.95, iPrimus countered with a 1.1TB plan at the same price.
Telecommunications analyst, Paul Budde, said the capacity is there and access technology costs are coming down so ISPs can afford to offer bigger plans. But 1TB plans won’t appeal to many customers.
“What you have to realise is it is a rather limited market it is not going to have a massive affect over the overall market,” he said. “On the margin side, yes, they are definitely under pressure but at the same time the costs [for the ISPs] are also less so it is not as dramatic as it looks.”
iiNet chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, said the ISPs user base didn’t consume ridiculous amounts of data when dismissing the need for unlimited plans at the AAPT acquisition press conference.
There will always be the early adopters that will take on these plans, such as the tech savy and heavy film downloaders, but it is the publicity the ISPs are receiving that is the most valuable to iiNet and iPrimus, Budde said.
“It’s great PR of course, but these plans will effect one, two, maybe three per cent of their customer base,” he said. “Obviously, this will attract people to the ISPs so they will have an opportunity to talk to them but the majority will go for smaller plans but at least they have a foot in the door with the customers.”
Market Clarity analyst, Richard Chirgwin, also found it hard to see mass market appeal for the 1TB plans but wouldn’t rule out the possiblility of wider adoption later down the track.
“It would be easy to make fun of it on the basis of ‘Who needs that sort of capacity, but I’m reluctant to do so because people always manage to find a way get there,” he said. “But even if you’re a heavy [movie] pirate, you would be working hard to use up the quota.”
Chirgwin suspects the plans themselves aren’t all that important but they are tools for ISPs to secure top positions in the broadband market.
“[1TB plans] might just be a positioning statement rather than an actual product,” he said.
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
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Comments
lorro
I already use well over 1TB on TPG, all via legal uses. There are many things offered by the internet today, and if a family would like to use most of the services and entertainment offered by the internet, users can easily run into the 1TB range.
TPG have unlimited internet, I don't see why they can not provide unlimited internet to the average person even if its a slight premium to the current 1TB plans.
James Usul
What are the legal uses of more than 1TB per month ?
I'm really curious to understand that - I appreciate you said your use is entirely legal - and thats great.
But I just can't work out what it is.
If more people understand about those uses, that might help to understand the merits of 1TB plans a bit more.
Lord_Apophis
Simple lorro, 1 terabyte of data can be used in about 7-8 days at 10mbps speeds, 3.5 terabytes of data can be used in about a month at 10mbps speeds. - Considering that's the average ADSL 2+ connection rate... Well you can see how it could get expensive for the ISP, especially for those who connect at more than twice that speed.
Mark
I will as 1tb on ndn will be like 200mb on adsl1
simon
@James
My girlfriend likes watch a lot of the soaps that are free to download house mates download whatever it is they download and i like to watch a lot of HD doco's all that on top of normal browsing.
Also a lot of website are offering HD content.
And you also have your huge game updates/downloads.
Personally i would prefer a much faster connection.
Mick
Simple Math...
Content * Users * Time = Bandwidth Used
Content (briefly) = HD Video Content, Video on Demand, Video Conferencing, All uploaded media (note uploads are counted)
Don't forget * number of computers, game consoles, internet enabled appliances, etc.
It all starts to add up quickly... all limited of course by the speed of the connection... give a stupidly fast connection and instead of spending less time online, it gets more tasks to do.
Paul Krueger
Heavy users already are on TPG :) so no, these much more expensive plans won't appeal.
TPG has 2 plans at $75 (available at selected exchanges) and $70 (available to all) that enable more then a gig a month.
Pat
Australian Internet consumers have been overcharged for years for meager plans while in other (Less affluent) parts of the world users have been enjoying "TRUE" unlimited internet access and laughing at aussie.
Hand on I can't join in right now I have to wait a week before I am unshaped!!
joe
The point here is not what people are using now but what an unlimited or 1TB plan will offer in the future. Companies like Virgin Media in the UK offering unlimited broadband drove a price war and in turn pushed secondary technology like IP TV and other streaming media. BBC iPlayer, 4OD etc etc are now standards for even the most average downloaded. BBC iPlayer uses 10% of the UK bandwidth and overnight changed the way people consume media. Australia is way behind most of Europe. You don't need to be a 'pirate' to consume high amounts of data, people in Australia need to start waking up to the fact that interactive content is the future...streaming HD, streaming music, interactive TV, gaming and on demand content is a standard across the globe.
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