TPG Opens the Bandwidth Floodgates

After midday today (perhaps to avoid the raft of April Fools Day jokes making the rounds), TPG brought their unlimited plan to the market. Granted, it has been initially limited to Sydney exchanges (with some people notably upset on Whirlpool about this restriction) but I guess TPG might be taking things easy before going the whole hog (or perhaps waiting to get PIPE hooked up to all of their exchanges).

I’ve already covered off my thoughts about this new offering in a prior blog entry so I won’t harp on too much about how I now appreciate the fact I no longer have to count the megabytes and gigabytes when I want to get content straight away. Sure, I’ll leave larger things to download overnight but if I fancy a game of something through Steam, I have the option of kicking it off at any time.

I also think that TPG is rather clever by charging $75 for their ADSL2+ Unlimited 24×7 plan. Particularly for users like myself who pay $70 a month for a grandfathered 40/110GB plan, an extra $5 a month to remove both the physical and psychological barrier of usage quotas is a small price to pay in my book. This also holds true for people initially swayed by TPG’s 100/100GB plan for $70 and is an enticing opportunity to have users throw another $5 at the ISP to do away with the quota altogether.

I should also mention that the plan change process was executed very quickly (in the space of ten to fifteen minutes). TPG must have all of their hamsters spinning their wheels at full pelt! Kudos to TPG anyway, it was certainly a painless experience as one would hope.

I will keep an eye on the overall usability of the connection as well as how much I end up downloading in the first month. I’m not anticpiating a huge increase compared to the average household use in previous months but I guess I will see how things pan out and report back with my findings.