Some of you following my personal saga will remember I’m in a NBN black hole; a brand-new apartment building, built by a developer that forgot to register the development with NBNCo. This means there’ll be no NBN here for ages, and with crummy ADSL infrastructure in the area, it means I’m stuck on 4G.
For the last six months or so, I’ve been with Vividwireless (an Optus subsidiary) which offered unlimited data each month for about $90, with the caveat that it’s speed limited to 12/1 mbps.
While this is fine for household use, it’s hardly brilliant. Netflix buffers a lot and pixelates more frequently, download speed is ridiculous at best, and anything more than browsing social or reading the news is extraordinarily slow.
Well, with the news a little while back that Optus would be winding up the Vividwireless service, I’ve been looking at alternatives and I might’ve found one – ironically, from Optus itself.
At the moment, Optus is offering two wireless broadband services – at $60 or $80 per month – which include 200GB and 500GB of data each month respectively. Not only is this cheaper than Vividwireless, but it’s also not artificially speed-limited to 12/1 mbps. In fact, it’s not limited at all, so you could theoretically hit NBN speeds (which we’ve seen on other carriers). The only downside is the data isn’t unlimited, but we don’t use that much – 500GB a month is plenty.
For those of you out there who are, like me, stuck between crap ADSL infrastructure and no NBN for the foreseeable future, this offer could be just right. I’ll be heading in to Optus tomorrow to make some further enquiries, but in the meantime, here’s the basics:
Want to look into it further? Check out Optus’ plan page, or you can head in store (like I’ll be doing tomorrow) and sign up on the spot.
If you’re thinking “well, that’s a 24 month plan, what if I get NBN before the minimum term is up”, don’t worry; you can actually cancel at any time. You don’t pay any plan penalties, just the remaining hardware installments for your modem. Alternatively, you can buy the modem up-front for $192, and then just pay $80 a month for the remaining period … but this seems a bit silly when you can pay off a substantial amount of it for effectively nothing on the 24 month contract.
Regardless, I know plenty of Vividwireless customers looking at better alternatives, and this one sounds hard to beat.
Let us know – are you stuck on 4G? What do you use for connectivity at home?
Editor’s note: No, this isn’t an advertisement. I’m just excited I found this and thought I’d share it with y’all.
Should we use only their modem or can we buy our own 4G modem?
You can only use the two modems supplied by Optus.
I have to laugh at the month to month terms. It’s $272 per month, and they send you a new modem every month.
Is there a link to this deal I can only find the 200gb plan?
You can use the WhistleOut widget above to compare the two plans, or simply access the 500GB deal here:
https://offer.optus.com.au/business/mobile/broadband-internet/huawei-b525-wifi/
Just scroll down a bit and you’ll see the two plan options.
Done anyone know if this plan will grant you free access to Optus Sport like some of their other plans do?
Unless they say so in their CIS, I’d doubt it.
Have just had a web chat with a useless Optus staff and confirmed that you have to purchase their new modem if going on month to month, EVEN if you have a perfectly capable 4g home wireless modem (like the one that we have bought for our current VividWireless plan). You can’t just sign up and put their Sim in your existing modem which sucks.
Yeah that does seem to be the downside, but plus side is the Optus supplied modem is Cat6 so it’ll be damned fast.
That’s wrong, you can definitely use your Vividwireless modem so don’t need to take a contract or pay for hardware.
Vividwireless modem is very locked down firmware, the Optus-supplied HBB modem is much more capable… though ultimately it probably doesn’t matter. I’d go in-store with your Vivid modem and try and argue the toss.
The only holdback from me is the excessive data charge over 500 gb , if as what one of the posts above mentioned there will be a speed limit instead this will be very ideal for me- otherwise, you will never get use the whole 500gb and would constantly checking the usage which is a lots of stress, especially for people like me who is sonused to vividwirlesss unlimited data. Can anyone clarify this ? I don’t really trust optus online chat people
Developers don’t install NBN’s fibre. NBN do. The developer was meant to notify NBNCo of the construction of the building and provide infrastructure for NBN to install their FTTP .. this, straight from NBNCo’s advice. But ultimately the result is the same – the developer dropped the ball, deliberately or not, and now we’re SOL.
NBN installs fibre to the building, the developer is responsible from the MDF to the apartment. If they put in copper they knew what they were doing.
Either way you are screwed. sorry, that sucks.
Hmm your developer is not telling the truth.
If it is a brand new building then the developer installs fibre to each apartment, you don’t install copper any more all new apartments are built this way.
Sounds more like the developer deliberately cut costs on you.
I follow Optus fairly closely. This does seem to be one of the best plans they’ve put it in a long time. Most significantly it’s the first plan they’ve ever had that introduces the potential of speed limiting instead of existing the customer to $1000’s of unwanted and uncontrollable automatic excess data top ups. Only downside I can see is that Optus don’t explicitly state they will definitely speed limit and not charge to up fees – it remains there choice. Be interesting what the real world result will be. Also what the real world speed will be. Optus have… Read more »
Has anyone gone on this Optus 4G plus wireless please let me know cos I want to switch my vividwireless to this if it’s has close 100 mbps download speed.
Thanks.
I will be today. I’ll let you know how it goes.
any update after you joined 21 days ago?
Sure, so I signed up 21 days ago as I said I would. The speeds have fluctuated a bit, as there’s a few variables. Optus’ 2300 MHz network can be really really fast, but equally, it gets quite congested of an evening meaning it slows a bit. I’ve seen up to 80mbps on the 2300 MHz network, but it drops below 10 sometimes.
Optus’ normal 4G network is much more constant, but not as quick. It generally hovers around the 10-20mbps speed, but it retains that speed constantly, night or day, peak or not.
I have read the “Critical Summary” of this plan and as far as data speeds go it states that: “Speeds are variable on the Optus 4G Mobile Network and will depend on a number of factors including congestion, location, local conditions, hardware, software and general internet traffic”…… to me this means it’s as fast as any other Optus SIM plan, for me that is generally 70/30mbps, pretty good, also the Optus advertisment describes the modem as a 4G plus modem so I’m guessing most people will get better speeds than most NBN plans. ……The Critical Summary also states that: ”… Read more »
This is awesome – thanks so much for sharing this. I spent most of last week looking for something between fixed wireless (not available where I am) and 4G and basically gave up because everyone imposed the 12/1 speed limit. Gonna buzz Optus tomorrow about this one, awesome timing 😁
What is to stop you from dropping the Sim into your phone? Even with no calls/SMS this might be a consideration. Dual Sim handset even.
I believe there’s some magic on Optus’ end to ensure it’s only used in a compatible modem, and not a mobile handset … though I’ll be testing whether this actually works. I’ve heard – colloquially – that this SIM might actually work in anything.
Can you get a fixed IP address with this plan?
Looks like you don’t get ANY kind of IP address, let alone a static one. So if you rely on any kind of port forwarding for whatever reason, you’re out of luck
Fortunately I use a VPN to access my home network when I’m out and about, but appreciate this won’t work for every user.
I could tell you were excited Chris. Great to see there are options for people out there stuck on ADSL with a decent amount of data at a reasonable price. Thanks for sharing
Thanks Jamie! Can’t even get ADSL here.. we got barely 3mbps line speed on ADSL 2. It’s truly awful. At least 4G will get us there in the interim until NBN arrives.
Are the upload speeds capped?
I believe not… There’s no disclosure of any limits beyond the expected capacity and technical limits that apply to 4G. Quick test at home on another 4G Plus service suggests this could easily hit 100mbps down.