Optus customers have been automatically pushed onto the refreshed ‘yes’ Fusion bundled broadband and home phone plans following customer demands for higher data options.
However the sudden push by the telco is believed to have caused speed slowdowns for affected users, leading to increased complaints on user forums.
Customers already on the 'yes' Fusion plans received an instant upgrade to the new plans revealed earlier in the week. Those on the 99 15 gigabytes (GB) and $109 30GB plans both received a 500GB quota while those on the $129 50GB plan were upgraded to a terabyte (TB) of monthly data quota.
The upgrade also meant users were shaped to 256Kbps once they reach their monthly quota, instead of the $150 per gigabyte above the quota charged on previous Fusion plans.
An Optus spokesperson told Computerworld Australia the change to rate plans was implemented to meet customers’ needs, and were designed to provide increased value to new and existing customers.
“We constantly re-evaluate our product offerings to ensure we’re delivering compelling value and we believe that these refreshes make Optus' fixed broadband and bundled plans some of the most compelling in the market,” he said.
Optus representative Ian Thomson flagged the automatic changes and the new plans on the Whirlpool user forums two weeks ago as a Christmas gift. However, affected customers Computerworld Australia spoke to said they had not received any notification of the plan changes and did not realise of the effect until they checked their respective quotas.
Affected customers will pay the same monthly amount and will not face additional charges.
However, some customers have complained of slower speeds since the switch on 1 December. The spokesperson acknowledged the problem but could not attribute the problem to any particular cause. He insisted the slowdowns were temporary.
“The nature of networks is such that users may occasionally experience slower speeds during peak periods, however, as standard business practice, we monitor network performance which covers all customers’ usage including impacts of these plans,” he said.
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