Big Time plan removal

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Big Time plan removal

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55 posts

Master Geek

#332508 20-May-2010 18:17

Telecom probably could afford to charge $50 for a 100GB cap, but why would they when they can get away with charging $50 for 40GB? Us heavy users are a very small (but vocal) portion of their customer base with their lowest income per unit of bandwidth. If we whine and complain about low caps or expensive data, it has no effect on them, and the only reason they added the unlimited plan was because they saw potential in us as an untapped market, which turned out not to work so they abandoned it.

They may be the big bad company in our eyes, but at the end of the day, they're out to make the most profit, not provide us with the service we want (not that those two things are always mutually exclusive, just in this case)

Lias

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#332512 20-May-2010 18:29

I vageuly recall that the "rough" figure of what SCC charged for capacity worked out somewhere around ~53 cents NZ/gb (rough given that ISP's have to provision in capacity not gigabytes)

Given that SCC are already charging hugely inflated prices due to their monopoly position, and SCC is half owned by Telecom (who are in effect double dipping) I see no reason why Telecom should not be selling bandwidth to its users at cost +10% or something similar, instead of cost plus 4000% currently or the proposed cost + 400%.

We know that they can make a profit on provisioing a basic DSL connection, with all associated infratstructure and national backhaul for sub NZD$30 a month. By my reckoning that means we should be able to get a 50-60gb plan for NZD$60, or a 100gb plan plan for ~$80, with Telecom still making some profit. Thats without SCC (Controlled by Telecom lets not forget) dropping its prices to something more reasonable.

Now for a change from Telecom bashing. They were not the first to offer unlimited uncapped broadband and ignomiously withdrawl from the market. That honour belongs to Chello Broadband, an early player on what is now TelstraClear's cable network (But back then was either Saturn or TelstraSaturn). I believe I was paying somewhere in the region of $135 a month for Cable TV, phone line, and 512/128kbps cable modem connection with no data cap. They arrived with great fanfare and pulled out of the market in a spectacular hurry not long after with very little fanfare. Personally I suspect they got the first bandwidth bill and had a heart attack.

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SparX711

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#332513 20-May-2010 18:33

Can we stop speculating on what and how paying customers have used the bigtime plan.

Unless i am mistaken, Telecom marketed and took peoples money for an "unlimited data and full-line-speed" internet plan that would be "managed" so as to be fair to all users on all plans they market.

In my humble opinion, if a customer choose to sign up and use the plan at face value consuming many hundreds of gigs of data then good on them, there are as many legitimate reasons as there are potentially illegal for moving large amounts of data. Constantly blaming and flaming heavy users only clouds over the fact that telecom has failed to effectively manage a popular product and now chooses to wash their hands of it.

What can we (the paying customer) do about that ?

freitasm

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#332515 20-May-2010 18:38

Crucius: Telecom probably could afford to charge $50 for a 100GB cap, but why would they when they can get away with charging $50 for 40GB?

Do you have numbers to support your assertion? Do you have any industry knowledge that allows you to categorically afirm that Telecom, or any other company in this business could do it for such amount of money?

For instance I am paying $149/mo for 80GB with TelstraClear. Do you think they should be able to do it for $40 then, based on your numbers?

Tel69

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#332516 20-May-2010 18:39

Agent24 - TELECOM TAKE NOTE:

I would be happy to pay $40-50 for a 50GB or so cap, because that's about how much I use. Your current capped plans are just too expensive for the caps they provide (compared to other ISPs)

Agreed, but it won't happen.
WHY? Because all the plans of the major players are around the same (roughly).
For what Telecom pays for the pipe vs what they get back in what they charge their customers it's a major money winner, but thats the same for the other ISP's as well.
But lets not mention price fixing in this conversation.

phire

22 posts

Geek

#332517 20-May-2010 18:40

I would be interested to know if it is national or international traffic that is causing the problems.

If it's international traffic then the solution is simple: Just give everyone free national traffic (and say 40-80gb of international traffic)

It has already been pointed out by many people that certain people (who download linux isos) will use as much traffic as you give them. If national traffic is free, then these people will be highly motivated to create local "linux iso" sharing networks where essentially one person downloads a file internationally and then shares it with everyone nationally.

This would remove a huge load from the southern cross cable, much more than implemented caching servers. And (excluding the cost of national traffic, which should be covered by pairing deals) doesn't cost anything to implement because the users will implement it themselfs.

freitasm

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#332518 20-May-2010 18:41

SparX711: Can we stop speculating on what and how paying customers have used the bigtime plan.

Unless i am mistaken, Telecom marketed and took peoples money for an "unlimited data and full-line-speed" internet plan that would be "managed" so as to be fair to all users on all plans they market.

In my humble opinion, if a customer choose to sign up and use the plan at face value consuming many hundreds of gigs of data then good on them, there are as many legitimate reasons as there are potentially illegal for moving large amounts of data. Constantly blaming and flaming heavy users only clouds over the fact that telecom has failed to effectively manage a popular product and now chooses to wash their hands of it.

What can we (the paying customer) do about that ?

Correct. I am always surprised though by the number of people who tells me they are on the Big time plan, and using 10GB a month. I think it'd be more expensive than in a smaller plan, and they would be sharing a pool with other users that we could easily call "sharks" or "vampires"), seriously impacting in their Internet experience.

Why did people do that? Why did people chose to suffer?

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Flashcards

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#332519 20-May-2010 18:43

Tel69:
Agent24 - TELECOM TAKE NOTE:

I would be happy to pay $40-50 for a 50GB or so cap, because that's about how much I use. Your current capped plans are just too expensive for the caps they provide (compared to other ISPs)

Agreed, but it won't happen.
WHY? Because all the plans of the major players are around the same (roughly).
For what Telecom pays for the pipe vs what they get back in what they charge their customers it's a major money winner, but thats the same for the other ISP's as well.
But lets not mention price fixing in this conversation.

And it's nigh on impossible for one of them to break ranks because Telecom own the infrastructure. Such is life...

sbiddle

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#332523 20-May-2010 18:56

Flashcards:
Tel69:
Agent24 - TELECOM TAKE NOTE:

I would be happy to pay $40-50 for a 50GB or so cap, because that's about how much I use. Your current capped plans are just too expensive for the caps they provide (compared to other ISPs)

Agreed, but it won't happen.
WHY? Because all the plans of the major players are around the same (roughly).
For what Telecom pays for the pipe vs what they get back in what they charge their customers it's a major money winner, but thats the same for the other ISP's as well.
But lets not mention price fixing in this conversation.

And it's nigh on impossible for one of them to break ranks because Telecom own the infrastructure. Such is life...

And there is also nothing from stopping any other company from deploying infrastructure, as we have seen with LLU rollouts.

It also totally overlooks the fact that separation does exist within Telecom and has been mandated by law. Telecom deliver retail ADSL services over the same UBA/EUBA product that all ISP's are moving to and pay the same prices for transit that Telecom retail will pay.

kobiak

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#332525 20-May-2010 19:00

that's so sad :(

currently i'm overseas with 30mbit unlimited plan both ways. I don't wanna move from BigTime... previously Telecom removed unlimited plan but keep existing customers on the plan. I want the same. I did not complain about speeds - these are reasonable for me.

shame. if I required to change the plan, I'll totaly move to another ISP including the phone.

helping others at evgenyk.nz

tob

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#332528 20-May-2010 19:02

wow what a scam this turned out to be.. back to my old ISP i guess.

System

521 posts

Ultimate Geek

#332529 20-May-2010 19:02

kobiak: that's so sad :(

currently i'm overseas with 30mbit unlimited plan both ways. I don't wanna move from BigTime... previously Telecom removed unlimited plan but keep existing customers on the plan. I want the same. I did not complain about speeds - these are reasonable for me.

shame. if I required to change the plan, I'll totaly move to another ISP including the phone.

I am in the same boat, telecom's other plans just don't cut it for me, other ISPs plans are much more appealing when BigTime is taken away, if telecoms plans don't change before we are kicked off BigTime i will be moving ISP for sure.

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#332530 20-May-2010 19:05

System:
kobiak: that's so sad :(

currently i'm overseas with 30mbit unlimited plan both ways. I don't wanna move from BigTime... previously Telecom removed unlimited plan but keep existing customers on the plan. I want the same. I did not complain about speeds - these are reasonable for me.

shame. if I required to change the plan, I'll totaly move to another ISP including the phone.

I am in the same boat, telecom's other plans just don't cut it for me, other ISPs plans are much more appealing when BigTime is taken away, if telecoms plans don't change before we are kicked off BigTime i will be moving ISP for sure.

Ok, I might be in the same boat. So, which ISP currently offers the best capped plans for the $?

Crucius

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Master Geek

#332531 20-May-2010 19:06

freitasm:

Do you have numbers to support your assertion? Do you have any industry knowledge that allows you to categorically afirm that Telecom, or any other company in this business could do it for such amount of money?

No, I don't. P
erhaps I should have been more clear, my point was that telecom could operate with a lower profit margin, but there is no incentive for them to do so, I didn't mean to claim any accuracy with my numbers.

tob

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#332532 20-May-2010 19:07

Kilack: Here is a theory, far fetched? not sure..

Telecom knew this would happen all along. How could they not? eat all you want plans in NZ have a history of this. They come along, then they cancel them because of big downloaders. So for Telecom to not have seen this coming seems a little unbelievable. They only had to look at past plans in NZ or at the thousands of other ISP's around the world dealing with these types of plans currently.

So theory is.. Telecom knew this would happen but they knew this plan would draw in crowds from other ISP's.
They planned to turn the plan off once they had good numbers then they drop the price of data on their unmanaed plans and hope to keep a certain percentage of users that they pulled from other ISP's. They know a certain amount will stay because they cant be bothered changing isp's etc..

possible?

spot on

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