Unlimited Wireless Broadband for $135/mth?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Unlimited Wireless Broadband for $135/mth?

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#1640103 25-Sep-2016 10:02

cynnicallemon:
quickymart:

Unlimited mobile data will never happen (with good reason).

They said professional rugby would never happen in NZ too...

Very different when dealing with the laws of physics

quickymart

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#1640112 25-Sep-2016 10:10

cynnicallemon:

quickymart:

Unlimited mobile data will never happen (with good reason).

They said professional rugby would never happen in NZ too...

That example has nothing to do with internet connectivity/availability.

BarTender

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#1640118 25-Sep-2016 10:18

cynnicallemon:
BarTender: Why do you think that Mobile Data will have unlimited? It's just not going to happen.
Mobile spectrum is a finite resource. Attracting data vampires is one sure way to make your mobile network melt.
If you need unlimited get fixed broadband.

Technically Spark/Skinny wireless broadband is not mobile, it is fixed to a certain tower for each customer AFAIK.

I guess you need to be introduced to South Africa's Telkom LTE unlimited wireless plan, approx 800 Rand or about $80NZ per month.

Last time I checked the Wireless Broadband required a SIM card and the Mobile network.
There is a geofenced number of sites that the router can connect to as depending on where you live there could be a number of servicing sites you could get bounced around to.
While you are connected to a site you're consuming radio spectrum in your area.

But I can't see wanting to attract data vampires would be a desirable outcome when it's just starting out.

Let's not Go Large eh?

PhantomNVD

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#1640122 25-Sep-2016 10:31

quickymart:
Unlimited mobile data will never happen (with good reason).

Only 5 years ago the same was said (here) about unlimited internet in general 😂

cynnicallemon

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#1640123 25-Sep-2016 10:32

BarTender:
Let's not Go Large eh?

Go Large, I seem to remember that as being xtra's intro to the world of unlimited ADSL IIRC.

Went on that right at the start and left shortly after it ran slower than dial up. I complained and even had one of telecoms managers phone me personally to apologise for the dreadful experience I had encountered. However they recovered from it and unlimited ADSL is the norm.

Hopefully it wont be repeated if everyone jumps on the gigabit bandwagon.

cynnicallemon

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#1640126 25-Sep-2016 10:37

Linux:

Very different when dealing with the laws of physics

Yeah, I seem to remember when they said ADSL was as far as copper could be pushed, then VDSL appeared.

Talkiet

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#1640131 25-Sep-2016 10:46

cynnicallemon:

BarTender:
Let's not Go Large eh?

Go Large, I seem to remember that as being xtra's intro to the world of unlimited ADSL IIRC.

Went on that right at the start and left shortly after it ran slower than dial up. I complained and even had one of telecoms managers phone me personally to apologise for the dreadful experience I had encountered. However they recovered from it and unlimited ADSL is the norm.

Hopefully it wont be repeated if everyone jumps on the gigabit bandwagon.

It (unlimited mobile data) might happen at some stage in the future, sure. However it's not happening now, and it seems unlikely to happen in the near term due to the cost and the rate of growth of date consumption even by non power users.

You also need to keep in mind that NZ has one of the best performing mobile networks in the world (across all our providers, not just Spark)... Tourists can barely believe the performance they get here usually, and most NZers going overseas to most places (especially the US and UK) are disappointed with the mobile performance. All the Telcos here are making sure that the networks perform brilliantly, and that means not overloading them with low revenue data use.

Bartender and I were around (in the business) during the time of Go Large, and it's fair to say it's extremely unlikely you ever "ran slower than dial up"... http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=78340

I'm not saying it was great for sure, but it wasn't dial up. Remember at the time there was no other mass market unlimited plan available, so all the huge users flocked to it. When the tipping point came and multiple people started offering unlimited, that spread the load of the incredibly high users (NNTP all month, every month, not even looking at what was downloaded... Not even joking) over several ISPs and importantly meant that the entire unlimited plan customer base per ISP wasn't made up of purely loss making customers.

Anyway, back to the OP point - the current Spark wireless BB offering does not offer unlimited use for $135. I can't make a declarative statement about whether it will in the future, but from my personal interpretation of things, it's highly unlikely in the short term.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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cynnicallemon

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#1640164 25-Sep-2016 11:29

Talkiet:

Bartender and I were around (in the business) during the time of Go Large, and it's fair to say it's extremely unlikely you ever "ran slower than dial up"... http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=78340

Well, I remember on dial-up that an average page back then would load in several seconds. When I went on the Go Large plan it went blisteringly fast for about two days and after that it took an average page about a minute to load up - yes that's was bloody slower than dial-up I can tell you. Telecom made a mistake about the numbers that would take it up and were indeed caught out. I doubt even back then, a Telecom manager would personally call a residential customer to apologise for the poor service which he admitted too. That was an act of damage control.

Having said that, I have no complaints about the current wireless networks performance as I have a Skinny 4G router on test and it's giving me some decent results.

What I don't like is that customers like me are being forced to pay a high price for better broadband as we don't have VDSL due to poor copper lines that Chorus don't seem to care about and are at the end of the queue for fibre (past 2020) while others more fortunate get fibre and upgrades to gigabit handed out like a freebie at a supermarket. It's gonna cost me about me about $200-$250/mth to service my families current data usage if I go with Skinny eventually so like another user here, I'm going to have to start being evil to my kids and prevent them from enjoying themselves watching netflix etc. $250 could get me two fibre accounts damn, I could even treat my neighbour to a free fibre connection or a needy family like Spark are trying to help now.

With the fibre rollout some are first and some will be last, unfortunately they will be potentially alienating the end of the queue and making them second class netizens for many years to come.

BarTender

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#1640194 25-Sep-2016 12:45

If unlimited broadband is a priority then you have the opportunity to move to over 200k+ households passed from the last report I seem to remember with the UFB build as it stands today with 200Mbit symmetrical today.
As someone on 14mbit ADSL with 5 in my household we manage to survive OK for the moment. And that's 3 kids on YouTube / Netflix / Lightbox whenever they have the opportunity. When UFB passes my home next year I will be signing up straight away. But for now my broadband is sufficient to service my household.
So I simply don't accept you have a problem if you get 10+ Mbit ADSL2 and thus unlimited data.
Yes there are those below 8mbit and in rural areas on Conklin's / ASAMs on ADSL1 and it's a pretty poor situation for them.

If you think it's a over priced I highly recommend you build your own nationwide network servicing over 80+% of the population with LTE and not just the low hanging fruit of the main metros. I suspect a fair amount of investment has been done by Spark.

simon14

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#1640206 25-Sep-2016 13:02

cynnicallemon:

Talkiet:

Bartender and I were around (in the business) during the time of Go Large, and it's fair to say it's extremely unlikely you ever "ran slower than dial up"... http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=78340

Well, I remember on dial-up that an average page back then would load in several seconds. When I went on the Go Large plan it went blisteringly fast for about two days and after that it took an average page about a minute to load up - yes that's was bloody slower than dial-up I can tell you. Telecom made a mistake about the numbers that would take it up and were indeed caught out. I doubt even back then, a Telecom manager would personally call a residential customer to apologise for the poor service which he admitted too. That was an act of damage control.

Having said that, I have no complaints about the current wireless networks performance as I have a Skinny 4G router on test and it's giving me some decent results.

What I don't like is that customers like me are being forced to pay a high price for better broadband as we don't have VDSL due to poor copper lines that Chorus don't seem to care about and are at the end of the queue for fibre (past 2020) while others more fortunate get fibre and upgrades to gigabit handed out like a freebie at a supermarket. It's gonna cost me about me about $200-$250/mth to service my families current data usage if I go with Skinny eventually so like another user here, I'm going to have to start being evil to my kids and prevent them from enjoying themselves watching netflix etc. $250 could get me two fibre accounts damn, I could even treat my neighbour to a free fibre connection or a needy family like Spark are trying to help now.

With the fibre rollout some are first and some will be last, unfortunately they will be potentially alienating the end of the queue and making them second class netizens for many years to come.

When dial up was the norm, the average webpage was much smaller in data size than webpages today. So you aren't really comparing eggs with eggs (edit; i meant to say apples with apples :) )

Remember, even if you are only getting 1mbps, thats still at least 20x faster than dialup.

kewefella

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#1640951 26-Sep-2016 22:12

Found the clause you were mentioning, it's for fibre, adsl and vdsl only. Wireless has it's own clause which definitely is not unlimited.

cynnicallemon

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#1640955 26-Sep-2016 22:20

kewefella:

Found the clause you were mentioning, it's for fibre, adsl and vdsl only. Wireless has it's own clause which definitely is not unlimited.

Yes they changed it yesterday/today after I informed them, as you said it's now in two parts.

GC55

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#1647911 9-Oct-2016 11:24

I started using Spark's Wireless Broadband a couple of weeks ago mainly due to the fact that due to the old copper cable connecting us to the street is degrading fast (it has had to be repaired recently) and making my VDSL connection degrade significantly. Even though our street has fibre installed the landlord says it's "too expensive" so WB seems to be a decent alternative. I am getting 70Mbps down and 30Mbps up (I live only 200m away from a cellphone tower) and my old phone plugs into the modem and gives excellent call quality using my old landline number.

The downside of course is the 120GB cap. I'm not hoping for unlimited but upping the cap to 150 or even 200GB would make things more manageable.

Regarding overage costs (about which there seems to be some confusion)- once I reach the 120GB cap I can buy an extra 15GB for $20 (I can do this on Myspark). However I can only do this 3 times (ie $60 for 45GB) after which my service will be cut off until the end of the month (ie after using a total of 165GB). I have had this confirmed by Spark. I did question why there is a limit on the amount of extra data I can buy, as $20 per 15GB is quite expensive and I would have thought Spark would want to take more of my money!. Alas the Spark helpdesk did not have an answer to this question.

PhantomNVD

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#1647931 9-Oct-2016 12:09

GC55:
I started using Spark's Wireless Broadband a couple of weeks ago mainly due to the fact that due to the old copper cable connecting us to the street is degrading fast (it has had to be repaired recently) and making my VDSL connection degrade significantly. Even though our street has fibre installed the landlord says it's "too expensive" so WB seems to be a decent alternative. I am getting 70Mbps down and 30Mbps up (I live only 200m away from a cellphone tower) and my old phone plugs into the modem and gives excellent call quality using my old landline number.

The downside of course is the 120GB cap. I'm not hoping for unlimited but upping the cap to 150 or even 200GB would make things more manageable.

Regarding overage costs (about which there seems to be some confusion)- once I reach the 120GB cap I can buy an extra 15GB for $20 (I can do this on Myspark). However I can only do this 3 times (ie $60 for 45GB) after which my service will be cut off until the end of the month (ie after using a total of 165GB). I have had this confirmed by Spark. I did question why there is a limit on the amount of extra data I can buy, as $20 per 15GB is quite expensive and I would have thought Spark would want to take more of my money!. Alas the Spark helpdesk did not have an answer to this question.

Skinny BB is $52/100gb and so your $165 would buy 300Gb (at $156) and uses the same network/cell tower so perhaps suits you better for now?

Other options are VF based, so may not suit your area, but Netspeed and Wireless Nation both do pretty big packages for about the same as your current, but also have a 'bonus' 50GB "offpeak" data and (with this) reach about 180gb/$120...

Another plus is both of these are NOT geofenced so can travel with you on weekends away or suchlike...

cynnicallemon

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#1647933 9-Oct-2016 12:12

GC55:

Regarding overage costs (about which there seems to be some confusion)- once I reach the 120GB cap I can buy an extra 15GB for $20 (I can do this on Myspark). However I can only do this 3 times (ie $60 for 45GB) after which my service will be cut off until the end of the month (ie after using a total of 165GB). I have had this confirmed by Spark. I did question why there is a limit on the amount of extra data I can buy, as $20 per 15GB is quite expensive and I would have thought Spark would want to take more of my money!. Alas the Spark helpdesk did not have an answer to this question.

Now that's funny, Spark refusing a customers money.

As I have said, I'm testing out a Skinny Wireless setup for a while to see if I can manage with the "limited" data. Having said this I can buy 100GB of data at $52 a shot and I have heard of no limitation to how many chunks I can purchase from Skinny. With Skinny I don't get a VOIP line so have gone modern and now using a mobile for home and chose an exact number (apart from the area code) which matches my soon to be gone landline.

I do agree that wireless plans either need to get cheaper or need to come with quite a bit more data. I'm more than happy to pay a reasonable amount for a plan that would cater for bigger data usage, waits...

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