$40 wireless broadband plans.

Forums › New Zealand Mobile and Wireless › $40 wireless broadband plans.

colinuu

246 posts

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#282702 6-Mar-2021 23:51

Vodafone $40 wireless broadband plan triggers backlash from niche players | Stuff.co.nz

Interesting article on Stuff.

I don't understand the rationale for "There will be a tiny financial benefit to a handful of urban users, at a huge cost to rural users who have no alternative." I'm not sure if there are many towers serving both urban and rural? Perhaps if Mike is watching he could expand on this bit.

My beef with this move is how come these low cost plans aren't available to rural customers? After all they are using exactly the same technology. The inescapable conclusion is that it comes down to the fact that Voda/Spark are competing with Chorus fibre in urban areas, but the competition isn't there in the rural areas, so they can charge what they like and we just have to suck it up.

michaelmurfy

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#2669269 7-Mar-2021 00:03

There is already a thread on the Vodafone plan here: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=282669

But I don't think WISP's are too concerned about this. I believe the Vodafone plan is more for the elderly who only have a landline phone or do very limited internet. 60gb these days is not too much and is only really suitable for the basics.

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colinuu

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#2669295 7-Mar-2021 08:49

I missed that thread. Please feel free to move my post. Thanks.

tdgeek

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#2669303 7-Mar-2021 09:19

michaelmurfy:

There is already a thread on the Vodafone plan here: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=282669

But I don't think WISP's are too concerned about this. I believe the Vodafone plan is more for the elderly who only have a landline phone or do very limited internet. 60gb these days is not too much and is only really suitable for the basics.

Times have changed. When ADSL arrived circa 1999, the Basic Plan was 200MB, suitable for light browsing and email.

gwh

73 posts

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#2669377 7-Mar-2021 11:20

VF are not allowed to offer them in rural areas under their contract for RBI1 signed between them and the govt years ago. They are required to sell their rural retail plans on that technology with a compulsory minimum markup to allow others to complete. $40 is below the cost a RSP would pay to buy a RBI1 service from VF.

Mike's point is that there are a large number of towers serving both for example anywhere on the outskirts of a city or a tower that covers a rural town. VF are cluttering their network with low value connections whose customers will probably generate a lot of support work for them. These sorts of connections are the very least attractive sort of service a ISP using radio broadband can sell and it's hard to see VF's rationale for even entertaining the idea.

coffeebaron

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#2669469 7-Mar-2021 13:54

The issue of semi rural towers serving both urban and rural is the available capacity is not the same. The tower may have good capacity in the urban area, but as you get further out into rural, the ability to fully access all that capacity especially across the higher frequency bands can significantly diminish. So just because it's the same tower, does not mean it has the same capacity for rural.

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richms

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#2669473 7-Mar-2021 14:00

Im guessing they're ok with running 4g into the ground like 3g is now, so that it sells 5g product and services.

Richard rich.ms

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#2669520 7-Mar-2021 16:16

Carefully managed, it’s a smart use of surplus LTE bandwidth. The problem is when they overprovision users - which we’ve seen from some operators,
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halper86

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#2669530 7-Mar-2021 16:47

I am going to repeat what many people have already said. First of all as @gwh said, VF has a contract with the Govt that it is obliged to meet. Second, rural areas are low density compared to urban areas therefore less revenue and for the same amount of expenses. And last, there are capacity constraints from having rural sites so far apart, especially when RBI sites are used by everyone.

michaelmurfy

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#2669540 7-Mar-2021 17:01

Am seeing a bit of "crosstalk" - gonna lock this and direct everyone over to the official thread now: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=282669