I was reading an article on the Sydney Morning Herald by David Flynn entitled “Road test: mobile broadband” which goes through and ranks the main 3G wireless internet services providers in Australia and thought I would make a few additional observations.

David gives the following ratings to each provider:

BigPond 7.2 Mobile
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Optus Turbo G
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

3
Rating: 4 out of 5

Vodafone
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

David then summarises saying that Bigpond is the best for speed and coverage, or if you are within 3’s network, then 3 is the best pricewise. They are also the two fastest providers. Now that is all well and good, but theres other things to take into consideration. In his comments about how expensive Vodafone is, he makes no mention of the new 5gb for $39 a month with a free modem plan that I am on. It was meant to be only offered for a limited time, up until the end of January, but it is still available. There is no mention of when the offer will end, so I think it is safe to assume it should be considered in a review, especially since all plans are prone to change anyway.

Now, the 5gb for $39 a month plan is, plain and simply, the best value plan of all these providers. The next closest is Optus with 5gb for $49.99 and 6gb for $59.99 both of which also come with a free modem. 3 is then more expensive with 4gb for $49 and 5gb for $69. Bigpond again is even more expensive.

Yes, for the bottom plan, 3gb for $29 a month is easily the cheapest, but 2gb is pretty piddly for myself and anyone else who is a heavy internet user. On our ADSL2+ plan we have 150gb a month with 40gb on peak, 110gb off peak, and we almost always get capped over the on peak periods. It is for this reason that I think David’s review is lopsided and is not relevant for a large amount of people.

Back to the point on pricing, Vodafone also have the cheapest excess usage charges, equal with 3, at 10c/mb. Something else to consider is this. If you go out of 3’s coverage area you will roam onto Telstra’s GSM network and be charged at $1.65/mb. So not only is it extremely expensive, but you get GSM speed’s, even in areas where Telstra has mobile broadband coverage. Vodafone and Optus on the other hand, when you leave their 3G/HSDPA coverage areas, you roam onto their GSM networks and are not charged any extra (except for the standard excess usage charge if you go over the usage limit). So the only thing that happens is that your connection speed slows down to effectively dial up speeds. Bigpond I have not been able to find information on as of yet, but I assume they are the same as Optus and Vodafone.

The next thing to consider is that Vodafone and Optus both have wider coverage networks than 3. Bigpond has an even larger coverage again. So if you are like me and are often not in a capital city or even on the outskirts of one, then 3 is practically useless with high data charges and slow access speeds.

With all this in mind, the next thing to take into account is that according to David’s tests, 3 hovered around 1.8Mbps and Vodafone hit around 1.6Mbps. That is not a big difference at all. Especially not when you take into account that Vodafone provides a better service in pretty much every other way. Bigpond is of course significantly higher at 2.5-3Mbps, but you do have to fork out the extra money up front to buy the modem as well as the more expensive plans.

In my experience as a user of Vodafone’s service, their customer service is absolutely horrendous. As I use Optus for my mobile phone, I have always found their customer service excellent. I can’t comment on 3 or Bigpond.

Finally, you have to take into account the overall stability of the service provided.

I have worked on a Bigpond service and I found it be extremely stable.

Optus I have not used so I won’t comment on.

Vodafone I have found in my own uses to be reasonably stable. From time to time it will drop out, however, I think this issue may be more software related as it seems to happen on my Mac and not on my Windows computer. All the same, a disconnect and reconnect fixes it up straight away.

However, despite these infrequent drop-outs, it is just as stable as my ADSL2+ connection.

3 I have not used so I won’t comment on them either.

Looking at David’s rankings, I can’t help but think the only things he has taken into account are the speeds and coverage areas. He talks about their costs, but to give Bigpond a 4.5 and Vodafone a 3.5 is incorrect.

From my own research for my needs, and for the needs of others with similar usage habits to myself, I would give the following ratings:

BigPond 7.2 Mobile
Rating: 3 out of 5

Optus Turbo G
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

3
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Vodafone
Rating: 4 out of 5

Popularity: 21% [?]

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