Primus have announced their National Broadband Network (NBN) pricing for the Tasmanian rollout, with prices within reach of existing ADSL broadband plans.
Primus, based in are one of three ISP’s participating in the Tasmanian NBN rollout, with pricing announced today starting at at $45 per month for 15Gb of data at the NBN’s basic speed of 25Mbps, which is faster than even the fastest ADSL2+ connections can obtain currently.
There is a catch though, the $45 per month Primus plan is only an introductory rate, with prices to double to $89.94 per month after a six month introductory period. This is also only applicable is customers enter into long term contracts of 12-24 months with the ISP. Given the immature state of the NBN market, being tied into long term contracts at such an early stage in the NBN’s lifetime may be a mistake as other ISP’s enter the market and offer more competitive prices.
Primus is hoping the six month discounted NBN access deal is sufficiently appealing to customers that the company can gain sufficient scale as customers take up the new broadband offering in Tasmania.
“We want to try and get customers connected to experience what we consider the broadband for the next generation,” Primus spokesman Andrew Sims told the ABC.
“We’re obviously looking at trying to get as many customers to take this service up, hence we wanted to take an aggressive stance on pricing.” he said.
Rival ISP’s participating in the Tasmanian NBN rollout iiNet and Internode are yet to announce pricing for their services, however Internode offer a range of FTTH services in greenfield estates across Australia, with this possibly hinting at NBN pricing models the company will adopt.
Internode currently offer a range of FTTH plans to the greenfield estates the ISP services in mainland Australia, with 15 Gb priced at $49.95 per month ($99 connection fee, but comes without the 24 month contract commitment that Primus requires), through to 200 Gb for $129.95 per month.
Exetel, an ISP not participating in the initial NBN rollout to Tasmania, has suggested that it could shake up the Tasmanian NBN pricing structure by offering 25mbit NBN connections for free, only charging users $1 per gigabyte they download over the connection. This is a novel pricing structure, but at this stage is merely a point of conjecture given the company has no firm date on their entry into the NBN reseller market.
