Optus Internet recently announced pricing for its’ new Cable Internet Service, “Optus@Home”
It is available for as low as $59.95 per month UNLIMITED traffic and time. This is VERY cheap for a high speed, high traffic service that is permanently connected (particularly when you factor in phone line rental, each telephone call, annual subscriptions, and then traffic allocations and speed restrictions)
Checkout http://www.optushome.com.au for more information or to register your interest.
Being a current BigPond Advance (cable) user myself at present, I find the Optus@Home pricing structure and feature set to be far better than the pricing Telstra recently forced on Bigpond users. As soon as I move house in the new year, I’ll be switching to Optus@Home (one of the key questions, I’m asking real estate agents is “Is Optus cable available to this house?”)
The new Optus@Home pricing structure represents the first major breakthrough in cheap broadband internet services in Australia and the more people that know about it, the better in my opinion. For far to long we have paid exhortative prices for “super-high speed” access, while places like the United Kingdom and United States pay the equivalent of their local telephone call prices for services like ISDN, DSL and cable.
By the time you read this, Optus@Home should have already begun rolling out installations in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.
It is available for as low as $59.95 per month with unlimited traffic and time
What’s provided?
- Fast, unlimited access to the internet
- Five Email Accounts
- Five Personal WebSpace Accounts
- Customized Netscape and Internet Explorer Browsers
- Revolutionary Content
- Technical Support 24 hours, 7 days a week
- Search & Navigation Tools
- Optus@Home User Guide
- Fast, unlimited access to the internet
High speed cable Internet up to 100 times faster than standard 28.8Kbps dial-up connections. A constant connection to the Internet – no need to dial-up, no busy signals or dropouts. Unlimited usage with no metered charges (but it is subject to a reasonable use policy)
Five Email Accounts
Why share your mailbox with everyone else when you can have one of your own? Optus@Home provides five free email addresses with each subscription.
Five Personal WebSpace Accounts
Want to put your family photo album online? Or how about a Web site devoted to your favourite band or hobby? You get 5MB of free space on our server with each email account (limited to 300MB of traffic served per month).
Optus@Home Customised Browsers
Optus@Home provides customised versions of the latest Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer software. The Optus@Home software package also includes popular multimedia plug-ins and applications such as QuickTime, RealPlayer, Shockwave, and Flash to turbo-charge your Optus@Home experience.
Revolutionary Content
Optus@Home provides a revolutionary online experience that combines the best Australian content with rich multimedia features only possible using our high-performance network. On Optus@Home, you can watch video news, action-packed movie trailers, and sports highlights – all without the wait. And that’s just the beginning. More…
Technical Support 24 hours, 7 days a week
Need tech help at 3 a.m.? No problem. Optus@Home’s technical support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Search & Navigation Tools
From getting today’s weather reports to hunting down information on the Roman Empire, Optus@Home makes it easy to find what you want on the Internet. Optus@Home features a built-in local search engine from Excite Australia. Optus@Home’s “How-Do-I” wizards let you complete daily tasks — like check local weather, find a phone number, or get maps and directions — with just a single click.
Optus@Home offers Excite Australia for the best search on the Web, and handy “How Do I…” wizards that make working the Web easier than ever.
Optus@Home User Guide
Our printed quick reference guide will help you get up and running quickly after your service is installed.
Pricing
Optus@home offer a flat monthly subscription fee, with unlimited usage and no metered or “per megabyte” charges. There is a once off installation fee and a choice of a month by month or one year fixed term contracts.
They may need to quote for non-standard installations and “for technical and commercial reasons” not all homes can be connected to the Optus@Home service. A $300 pro-rated cancellation fee will apply to customers cancelling their Optus@Home Accelerator plan prior to the completion of 12-month contract. They offer a 30 day Money Back Guarantee on your monthly subscription fee
The installation charge includes a cable modem, an ethernet card and onsite configuration and overview.
System Requirements
In order to receive the Optus@Home service, your PC or Macintosh will need to meet minimum system requirements. These requirements are relatively low and are met by most computers sold over the past few years. These requirements are:
Is Optus@Home for you?
It all depends on the user market.
Those who have a limited need for basic email and web browsing a couple of times a week, standard dial accounts like Labyrinth are fine. This is what I’m recommending for my mother and a few friends.
However, once you start dialing in more than once a day, every day of the week, or go to a permanent connection, Optus@Home Cable looks VERY cheap. Consider my old setup;
Second phone line: $15 per month
Calls to provider: $15-$30 per month
ISP Charge: $15 per month (based on AUSOM’s annual fee/12 months – it could be more for other ISP’s)
I’m suddenly looking at near $60 per month for my “cheap” access and it is slow and often limited on the amount of traffic I download per month. So $70 per month for fast, unlimited and permanent access is really very cheap.
As I said it all depends on YOUR personal usage patterns and unfortunately my usage pattern is becoming the norm in this country and could be considered “low” compared to the average United States user. As more things are available on the net, the more we use it.
Credits
I have no affiliation with Optus Internet, although I used to work for Optus Communications many years ago. Now I’m a disgruntled Bigpond Advance user, who will be switching to Optus@Home as soon as possible.
Some information in this article may be Copyright ©1999 At Home Network Australia Pty Limited. All Rights Reserved.@Home,@Home Network,@Work,@Home Network Australia are trademarks of At Home Corporation, and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Optus is a trademark of Cable & Wireless Optus.
A copy of this article, with colour images, is available from my website, https://www.nicholaspyers.com.
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