Is it worth going naked (2011)
Internode have just announced that for customers with existing ADSL2+ broadband, transferring to a Naked plan whilst keeping your existing phone number is now possible.
Just over a year ago I compared the costs, and decided it wasn’t worth it. So has anything changed since then?
Current monthly expenses (Nov 2011)
| Service | Description | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Broadband | Internode Easy-Broadband-Classic (50GB)* | 47.45 |
| Telephone | HomeLine® Budget# | 28.95 |
| Total | 76.40 |
* – ‘grandfathered’ plan no longer available to new customers. Price includes 5% discount.
# – HomeLine Budget plan activated before newer conditions were introduced which disallow non-BigPond ADSL providers, and also includes $6 to enable Caller Number Display.
This is almost the same as last year, with the only change being Telstra are charging $2 more per month than they used to.
Easy Naked monthly expenses (Nov 2011)
| Service | Description | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Broadband | Internode Easy Naked Broadband (30GB)* | 56.95 |
| Telephone | Internode NodePhone2-Special | 0.00 |
| Total | 56.95 |
* – price includes 5% discount
Whereas last year I could have got 150GB/month, now for the same price now I’d get only 30! There’s also a one-off setup fee of $79 (for 2 year contract) or $129 outright.
So all other things being equal, there’s a saving of $19.45/month, but with the downside being 20GB less quota. So, could I survive on only 30GB/month? Well looking at the last 12 months, apparently not always:
[](../../assets/2011/11/monthly usage[5].png)
The next step up is the 200GB plan for $75.95 with 5% disc included. This pretty much nullifies the savings. It’s a pity they don’t offer something between the 30 and 200.
The other thing I’d need to figure out is how this would work with my existing PennyTel VoIP account. As I understand it, my trusty old Sipura SPA 3000 only supports receiving calls from one VoIP provider, and I assume that would need to be NodePhone for the number porting to work correctly. A bit more investigating is required on this front.