Launtel Daily Price Increase for Lower Tier Plans

hazzad on 30/09/2023 - 08:17
Last edited 30/09/2023 - 08:51

Went to unpause my service this morning to find minimum plan is now 3.50 for 25/5. I had been paying about 2.25/day up until my last unpause which was about a month ago. Looks like there is is little price diff between the low and higher tier plans making low end tier plans ridiculously expensive if you were to actually connect for a month at over $100/month. I'd read about an active push to kill off lower tier plans by NBN but is this seriously the way forward with launtel? I know they had a price promo in play for some time but that now appears dead.

Anyone from. Launtel care to comment on this?

Edit : I've just noticed that they don't even seem to offer 25/5 as an option anymore for new connection but even on 50/20, 3.50 a day is way to steep. It shouldn't be more than 2.50 a day at current monthly rates from other providers.

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Comments

  • GordonD on 30/09/2023 - 08:38

    Welcome to the NBN. At least the NBN monopoly that suits NBNCo and its commercial interests, not its customers or the country. Prices relentlessly going upwards. Lower speed plans not being offered by ISPs.

  • mitty on 30/09/2023 - 08:57
    +1

    I love the concept of Launtel but they are not the cheapest. You are sadly better of going with another provider and paying for a full month at once to receive a bit of a discount. The ability to pause/unpause, obviously comes at a cost and the way Launtel models their pricing. There is much talk on WP about this, both in the Launtel and other provider threads. It obviously suits some people which is great, but it won't suit everybody. EG in my case, 50/20 is 3.40 a month, 100/20 is 3.50 a month. So I'm not sure why they're even offering the slower plan any more, when for an extra $3 a month you can get double the download speed.

    • hazzad on 30/09/2023 - 09:45

      Yeah I get that the ability to pause and unpause can come at a slight price hit but at over 100/month for the 50/20, how is that attractive to anyone wanting it as a full time plan? The going rate for that plan with most providers is about 70-75. I only use the service a handful of days a month so signing up to a monthly plan makes no sense. I don't need anything more than 25/5 for where I'm using it but would accept 50/20 if the price was a little more reasonable. Luckily I have 4g backup but the reception at this location is sketchy so speeds are all over the place. So would prefer the NBN connection but not sure I can justify it for 3.50/day for what it's used for.

  • Central Intelligence on 30/09/2023 - 09:04

    Well it is no secret that Launtel's focus is to use the lower bandwidth plans subsidise the higher bandwidth plans. It has been like that since day one, but you will notice that they always state the opposite.

    However, you just need to look at the numbers to figure out if they are spinning you a yarn or not. For example, recently many of their POIs have reached capacity and they no longer give the FillerUp discount. This is usually reached because of a whopping one subscriber who ultimately will influence how much of the free CVC is used on that POI. Higher bandwidth plans mean that those limits are more easily met. That overage needs to be paid, and if you do the calculations you will know how expensive it is, even though that person only used that 1000+ mbps for a few minutes.

    So, every time you see Launtel write that higher plans are subsidised by lower plans, that's just false. They cannot substantiate that at all as far as I know, they have just been deflecting the comments on Whirlpool and I believe people eventually woke up and many have left because of their business model which caters to subsidising the higher bandwidth plans. Their whole business model doesn't actually work if they were taking an even sample within the average broadband consumer.

    Basically, ask yourself whether you believe the math, or do you believe the marketing material.

    Go look up the costs in the SAU yourself and make your own decision.

  • mskeggs on 30/09/2023 - 10:24
    +1

    Some of the comments here are a bit incoherent.
    The cost of the NBN supplied service is part of the cost, but the fixed costs of support, billing, backhaul etc. mean that having the service available to be unpaused costs something.
    There isn’t a business model that allows for everyone to have a paused NBN connection except for a couple of days per month. The poor cell coverage OP mentions shows that - there is a substantial cost in making the infrastructure available, if there wasn’t we’d all have gigabits of fibre and ubiquitous 5G.

    NBN has raised wholesale costs to low speed plans cost about the same as higher - it makes a big difference to them if they can convince 10million houses to pay $3 extra a month as it is all profit. So the price rises for lower plans are unlikely to be reversed.

    As for interconnect charges, many transit links are charged as 95th percentile bills, I don’t know any that are charged based on max usage. ANd running links saturated delivers very poor quality network. So if there is bursty traffic it is hard for ISPs to predict their costs - so they want lots of customers to smooth out the peaks and troughs. And they want to overprovision links so network quality is high. But nobody wants to pay for it all.

    I like that Launtel exists as an option for somebody with a holiday home or off-site workshop or similar for occasional, high quality network usage. The economics of the NBN and IP backhaul mean if you use it 10 days a month you don’t cost them appreciably less than a 30 days customer - so select a cheaper ISP if that is the case.

    For what it is worth, I buy 100/40 from them on a monthly plan, and only paused it when we went on holidays for a month. The service is very good, they have resolved any issues swiftly, the performance is good and they provide planned maintenance alerts and RCA’s if there is a fault. These all matter if you need reliable Internet, so I am happy paying a bit extra to get them.

    • hazzad on 30/09/2023 - 12:12
      +1

      The issue I see here is that NBN co has essentially become a monopoly. There is no other fixed line option available to everyone in this country. 4g is sketchy to a lot of people at best. Given that situation it should be affordable to everyone. Not seen as a money making exercise. It should exist to cover cost, not make significant profits.

  • Clear on 30/09/2023 - 11:36
    +1

    Launtel was never cheap.

    • jlv on 30/09/2023 - 12:00

      I agree but I have found their customer service outstanding

      • Clear on 30/09/2023 - 12:22

        If the connection is good there's no need to talk to customer service. If you do then there's clearly a major issue.

        Just like the early days when they wouldn't spend money on infrastructure upgrades to keep up with demand.

        • rumblytangara on 30/09/2023 - 15:56

          It took me one phone call with ABB to get placed outside their CGNAT pool. Guy I spoke with knew what he was talking about and had a little side discussion about routers. Blew my mind- I cannot remember the last time I've spoken to a tech support number where they knew what they were talking about and didn't have to follow some kind of script written for grannies.

          • Clear on 30/09/2023 - 15:57
            -2

            @rumblytangara: Yep I rate them highly after using residential, business and enterprise with them. Their prices are better than many others too.

            • Clear on 30/09/2023 - 19:49
              -1

              @Clear: Hey negger ABB is cheaper than Launtel. Let's look at business plans for example (where Launtel make the most money). 100/40 is $169.40 per month and ABB is $109 per month.

              $60.40 extra a month. Can't be justified.

        • jlv on 30/09/2023 - 19:08

          99% of my issues have been with the Network provider named "Redtrain". Launtel have been. Nothing but stellar

    • hazzad on 30/09/2023 - 12:08

      They were cheap for my needs. $2.25 a day for on and off again connection was exactly the right price. A 1.25 jump a day is way to much for me.

      • brendanm on 30/09/2023 - 15:59

        $3.50 a day once in a blue moon is too much? Seems a bit strange. There are no other options for what you want, so the price for a couple of days a month is a bargain, compared to paying anyone else for an entire month.

        • hazzad on 01/10/2023 - 09:37

          It's actually quite easy to have thar concern when compared to other providers full month costs and the fact that I had been only charged 2.25/day previously. Clearly there was still money in that tier pricing. And I don't believe for a second they are being charged 3.50 a day from NBN co. It's just disappointing that they are either pricing those plans out of existence or as others have said using them to subsides the higher tier plans. Which I honestly don't get aw most people would be on those lower tier plans. The demand for higher tier plans would be quite niche in my opinion.

          • brendanm on 01/10/2023 - 10:22

            @hazzad: Your use case is quite unique to be honest, so you should be happy that someone actually caters to what you want. They could just choose to delete the pausable plans and then you'd have no choice but to pay wfar higher than your $3.50 a day.

  • psyren89 on 30/09/2023 - 13:11

    You were likely on a promotional price that has since expired since your POI is now full (or getting close).

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