A fortnight after first signalled by the service provider’s managing director, Simon Hackett, Internode will offer ADSL2+ plans with a terabyte of monthly quota, but only on exchanges served by its own DSLAM equipment.
The new “T-Shirt” plans come after Hackett moved to qualm concerns that Internode hadn’t met competition presented by TPG, iiNet and iPrimus in the emerging battle for the highest monthly quotas. At the time, he cited problems with pricing agreements with Telstra Wholesale, over which the service provider still operates for some exchanges where it does not used its own hosted equipment, or DSLAMs from Optus.
“We're currently waiting on some answers to important and relevant questions from various suppliers over the next few weeks, before we can fully determine and release our next plan revisions,” he told users on the Whirlpool forum
The newly released plans appear to have forgone those negotiations, as the plans will only be available for those users served by Internode’s own Agile equipment. The service provider’s subscribers on the Optus Wholesale network will be eligible for plans up to 300GB monthly quotas, while those on the Telstra Wholesale network are not yet eligible for the new plans.
Hackett said in a blog that only existing Easy and Naked Easy plans would be “grandfathered” or eliminated as a result of the new offerings.
A total of five different tiered monthly quotas are offered under the new “T-Shirt” plans, ranging from 100GB a month to a full terabyte, the latter of which is the most expensive in the market at $159.95 without bundling. The quotas comprise both uploads and downloads but are not split into peak or off-peak periods during the day.
Both iiNet and Internode expressed anger over recent cuts to Telstra broadband pricing, which the smaller service providers claimed undercut the incumbent’s own wholesale pricing. The two providers jointly submitted a letter of appeal to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in retaliation, though no action has been taken as yet.
“Matching those BigPond ADSL2+ prices through the Telstra wholesale access path would send any provider broke,” Internode’s carrier relations manager, John Lindsay, said in a statement at the time.
Internode currently operates its own active DSLAM equipment at 164 exchanges nationally - with plans for a further 25 - though has already reached capacity at 12 exchanges. For those it can’t service with its own equipment, the provider relies on Optus’ network of 370 exchanges or Telstra’s 2782 exchanges equipped with ADSL2+ capabilities.
Hackett told Whirlpool users that negotiations with Telstra Wholesale were ongoing but that plans would only be revised once a deal had been reached.