Based on the idea that a bleg is a blogged bit of begging, here is a blogged offer – a bloffer.
I’ve just escaped from my Telstra wireless broadband subscription after two expensive years. If anyone wants my modem, just let me know and come round and pick it up. You have to plug it in and all, but otherwise it’s a go anywhere wireless broadband modem. Just email me on nicholas AT gruenxxx DOT com DOT au and remove the ‘xxx’s.
Meanwhile I continue to be surprised that no-one that I know of offers wireless broadband by the gigabyte – rather than on a plan where you pay a fixed fee for each month. I realise it wouldn’t be for everyone, but there must be plenty of people in my position who use it only when they travel and then only occasionally. In my case I need to be able to use it for two weeks at a stretch – and once a year for six and so Telstra’s 1 Gig limit was getting very cramped. They were charging $60 per month for 1 Gig (counting the downloads and uploads unlike ADSL). Optus are now giving me 5 gig a month for $40 per month which is a bit better. But it’s quite a bit slower. No idea why.
Nicholas, how slow is it?
I use ‘3’ wireless broadband as my principal internet connection from home and find the speed more than adequate. I typically get 1.6 Mbps (megabits per second).
Telstra have upgraded their network to support 7.2 HSDPA download speeds I believe, so this might be the difference in speed?
You can get broadband by the gigabyte, they just don’t advertise it a great deal. For instance, Dick Smith sell Dodo branded 3G USB modems and a non-Dodo customer can buy 3GB for $60 (not sure if that has to be used within a month or not). I was sure ‘3’ did a similar deal but they seem to have a per-month fee but I suppose you can sign up and then cancel after only one month …
Thx,
Just goes to show that I should have ‘asked Troppo’ before buying my Optus Package, as I would have been fine with their $30 per month package – then again Optus threw in the modem, so it’s much of a muchness.
I don’t see any non monthly plans though.
If you look on this dodo page:
https://secure.dodo.com.au/wireless/PlanSelection.aspx
you can elect to have a “no contract” deal, which means you can cancel after one month I guess. Not strictly a pre-paid download amount, but fairly close.
Having said that, we found Dodo awful to deal with when we wanted to cancel our internet connection. No end of grief.
The free modem is worth a fair bit, clearly, so I don’t think you’re out of pocket.
So what speeds do you get? I use http://speedtest.net/ to measure speeds BTW …