Yahoo Finance 500,000 Telstra internet customers to get double speed for FREE
Five hundred thousand Telstra customers around the country will be able to enjoy their cable broadband at twice the speed for no extra cost while they wait for NBN delays to ease.
The telco giant is scrapping its ‘Premium Speed Boost’ that saw customers fork out an extra $20 per month to unlock cable speed, throttled at 50 Mbps, to its maximum speed of 100Mbps, according to the SMH.
It means all cable customers who have not been paying for the extra speed will automatically enjoy faster internet, while those already paying the monthly fee for the boost will keep the speed and as well as $20 in their pockets every month.
Telstra customer value management executive Jana Kotatko confirmed to Yahoo Finance that "around half a million" would benefit.
Why the freebie?
Kotatko said that the high demand for NBN has led to delays in connecting people to the national broadband network.
To “take some congestion out of the migration pipeline”, Telstra is recommending customers hold off on ordering the NBN service.
In the meantime, the telco has upgraded its speed to provide customers with the same potential download speeds as the NBN.
“Our engineers have carefully assessed this bandwidth upgrade and confident, based on the current usage patterns, that we don’t expect any major congestion issues,” Kotatko said.
“We’ll contact our customers to let them know when the time is right to make the move to NBN.”
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It’s a bid to appease Telstra customers while the NBN works through its issues, Finder.com.au telco analyst Alex Kidman told SMH.
"As we shift into the last phase of the NBN rollout, Telstra is trying to ensure those customers still on Telstra cable remain happy so they're more likely to stick with Telstra once the NBN grants them the choice of any internet retailer," Kidman said.
"They're also getting a taste of faster 100 Mbps speeds, which means they're more inclined to want faster NBN plans.”
"Of course those customers are still in for a shock when they discover that $90 per month will only get them 50 Mbps download speeds on the NBN, whereas this pricing change means right now they're getting 100 Mbps on Telstra cable for about that price."
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