Want Cheap Mobile Broadband in New Zealand?

Well, you’d better forget it. Let me branch away from electric cars for just a moment to explain.

Firstly I’d better make myself clear: I don’t have all the answers as to why we pay so much for our mobile broadband in New Zealand, though I do have inside sources, and I am aware that the lack of competition plays a large part.

Like many kiwi households, we rarely use our “land line” phone. In fact the only reason we have a land line connection is so the DSL has a line to run on – and don’t think Telecom NZ isn’t aware of this.

I mean, calling your friends on their home phones is a rather quaint, old fashioned thing to do. Why bother when you have a mobile phone in your pocket? Calling a land line phone is now something we do when we want to contact grandma.

Our friends at Telecom aren’t stupid. They realise people don’t use their land lines any more. Therefore the only way Telecom can keep people like you & me addicted to their ancient copper lines is through their DSL broadband service. And with no real competition, why not jack up the price a bit? No harm done right?

Well, wrong in fact. But there’s nothing we can do about it.

Despite the puppies & rainbows themes of Telecom’s high-budget advertisements, Telecom isn’t the ally of the working man or woman. Just open your latest phone bill, compare it to our Australian cousins, and you’ll see what I mean. While you’re at it, watch the news to see how Telecom New Zealand are treating & sacking their long-suffering workers, all while the CEO receives a $5m performance bonus – even though Telecom made a 44% loss on last year. It all sounds a bit dirty.

I digress. The purpose of this article is to talk about mobile broadband pricing so let’s jump to it.

Assuming I want to ditch my old copper-fed land line + DSL connection and replace it with a wholly mobile setup, what are my options?

Let’s compare pricing of New Zealand’s three mobile providers, Telecom, Vodafone and newcomer 2degrees, along with a 3 Gigabyte DSL plan. Here are the results:

Note: Total Home Lite includes the monthly home phone connection. Telecom and Vodafone cellular prices shown are from open (not fixed) plans.

Three observations I noticed while researching the many different plans were:

1: There’s some pretty obvious elbow-linking going on with the two main providers and their pricing.

2: Don’t even think about exceeding your allocated limit unless you really like financial punishment.

3: The various plans, terms, small print, contracts & hidden fees available would even confuse Mensa.

So in short, if you want to bring your home into the 21^st century and ditch your old copper connection in a cost effective manner, you’d better think again. Until we see some competition in this industry you’re likely to be tethered to your old copper connection for some time yet – and that’s so last century.