wellygary:

 

On reflection I think this is designed to get rid of all of Spark's "unplan" customers, which as a post paid plan cannot be helpful from a business cashflow point of view.

 

Unplan may have had an advantage in the past to attract low usage customers with a lower price point, but as data demands grow most customers now will be clocking up more than the 120GB top tier..

 

Having customers on "pay in advance" is much more beneficial from a business point of view, and as time goes on it is a significant advantage as customers transition off copper to Fibre or wireless...

 

I agree. Going from postpaid to advance payments makes financial sense, and so does a guaranteed plan charge ensuring business certainty per customer.

The price points have changed on the different speeds. If I remember, for the old unplan fibre max with Netflix, it costed $120 a month (over 120GB) and now it is $100 and open term. Fibre 100 (incl NF) was $99 and now $85.

They sure are going to shake up the market here, I predict their customer base will grow as the number of people seek to bundle up and save with fibre and Netflix - these prices are very sharp considering they are open term.

However, basic math works out that their revenue will decline as the amount of customers on unplan 12 month contracts move to this new plan. Transitioning customers also save some coin here going from paying $105/month for DSL to $100 for the gig or $85 for 100.

Final point: this is going to shake up the rural broadband market too. For those living in the city fringes and in those areas where sufficient capacity remains for unlimited FWA, Spark is offering customers these applicable plans at the same price as urban. It is a well known fact that rural broadband is expensive and has miniscule data caps by today's standards, so I hope Spark will aggressively - but carefully - market these plans to rural folk to maximise revenue.