In at least three separate conversations this week, the plight of NBN was mentioned. If you are like us, our ADSL is painfully slow, even taking a minute to download a pdf or sometimes just to load a website can be so slow! Don't even talk about videos. For us, NBN is not coming until 2019 or something far away so it is time for households like ours in Australia to think laterally and some providers have started to provide some viable alternatives.
We've been looking and it seems none have really offered a good deal until now.. Optus seems to have taken the initiative with a huge offering of 140GB over their wireless broadband 4G+ network for only $70 / month. 4G+ for the most part is much, much faster than NBN and the price is in line with what most people are paying for their ADSL, Naked or NBN connections each month. For this, you will have to get a mobile broadband modem or dongle and insert the sim card that you get. Or you can use an old phone and turn on tethering to share the wireless hotspot to the other devices.
A quick survey of other mobile broadband providers gives us this
Optus 140GB $70/month (one year contract minimum)
Kogan 30GB $50/month (no contract, first month you get 30GB but it is not ongoing)
Vodafone 50GB $60/month (two year contract minimum)
Telstra 20GB $70/month (one year minimum)
TPG - not available?
Vivid Wireless 40GB $59/month (two year minimum)
We're still investigating but it looks like this could be a viable alternative to ADSL and NBN. If you see issues with mobile broadband as an alternative or you have other providers or suggestions, please leave a comment and we can incorporate them into this post.
