TPG Unlimited 24×7 – One Month On

A month ago, I wrote a blog entry regarding TPG’s introduction of their new ADSL2+ Unlimited 24×7 plan at selected exchanges. TPG is still rolling out the availability of this plan at exchanges as it requires the provisioning for suitable backhaul (presumably using the recently acquired PIPE as the, umm, pipe).

So how did the first month on the new plan go?

Let’s start with how much was transferred over the connection in the month. According to our router, 134.08GB was downloaded which was the busiest month on record since traffic logging started in April 2008. The previous four months worth of usage averaged just under 50GB per month so there has been a definite increase in download activity.

To put this in perspective, our prior plan allowed for 40GB peak usage (between 0700 hours and 0100 hours) and 110GB off-peak usage (between 0100 and 0700 hours). I did take the opportunity to download and backup some of my purchased games in Steam just in case I want quick access to them in the future as well as downloading a number of things from Microsoft TechNet (including the recently released Office 2010) and Microsoft Connect (such as the public preview of Windows Home Server V2 – Codename Vail).

Effectively, usage has increased nearly tripled since changing plans despite my anticipation that there would not be a large increase. I must admit that speeds did not seem to suffer as a result of changing plans but of course it is still early days and results between various exchanges can vary based upon the usage patterns of users.

In theory, we would have been fine on the 200GB plan for $5 less but would have had to be vigilant with apportioning 100GB to each of the peak and off-peak periods and then put up with shaping at 2Mbps download and upload speeds remaining at 1Mbps.

At the end of they day, I reckon if you can afford $75 a month and you have TPG at your exchange, the ADSL2+ Unlimited 24×7 plan is a fantastic deal so long as you don’t require technical support. Particularly in the case of families, trying to keep track of and manage the household usage of your quota can be problematic and difficult. TPG are certainly setting the pace and with recent plans and are giving the bigger players a run for their money.