Broadband competition

The Herald reports:

Broadband users are being bombarded with offers of higher data caps, Sky TV discounts, free surfing on unmetered websites and cheaper prices.

And an industry expert says New Zealanders will soon have access to even more data without any great cost increase.

Orcon is leading the charge with a $99-a-month plan that includes unlimited data and national landline calls of up to an hour.

That’s pretty good. I suspect they have some sort of reasonable use policy though for their data.

A year ago, customers on Vodafone’s Ultimate package paid about $120 for 30 gigabytes of data and anytime national toll calls.

Now their data limit has been lifted to 80GB – at no extra cost.

Telecom has also increased its 30GB data allowance to 50GB – also at no extra cost.

That’s good from both.

Telecom’s head of marketing, Chris Thompson, said more of its customers were spending time online and increasing their data use mainly because of the availability of music, video and on-demand TV services.

Among its packages is a 500GB plan for heavy users. “We are also seeing usage increasing on mobile data very strongly as Kiwi take-up of smartphones rapidly increases.”

Orcon’s general manager of retail, Taryn Hamilton, said that three years ago, customers paid $81 for 1GB.

“Now we do 30GB and free national calling for $75, or unlimited data for $99.”

As UFB really hits my expectation is data plans will be TBs not GBs, and hopefully one day NZer kids will say”Daddy/Mummy what was a data cap”.