A handful of service providers stepped forward since last week’s guide to residential fibre plans. The market is fast-moving with new providers coming on stream all the time.
I’m interested in the faster 100/50Mbps fibre plans because the slower 30/10Mbps fibre speed isn’t much of a step up from copper.
You can get that much from the copper network and VDSL providing your house is not too far from a Chorus cabinet. Some VDSL customers do better.
The listing is simple for now. It just shows the service provider with a link to its website, the company’s top data plan and the price, along with the cost of data if you go over the cap.
Prices vary a great deal. That’s because different service providers bundle in extras like VoIP services and more advanced configurations.
Some providers are regional specialists and don’t cover the country.
| Service provider | Data GB | Monthly charge $ | $ per extra GB |
| Actrix | 1000 | 210 | 2 |
| Inspire | 1000 | 265 | $10 /10GB |
| Lightwire | 600 | 159 | Note a |
| Now | 350 | 145 | 2 |
| Orcon | unlimited | 134 | Note c |
| Primowireless | 500 | 299 | 1 |
| Snap | 150 | 110 | Note b |
| Telecom | 500 | 159 | 0.5 |
| The Cloud | unlimited | 155 | – |
| Vibe Communications | 20 | 96 | 0.8 |
| Worldnet | 1100 | 179 | 2 |
a) Lightwire has soft caps, if you continue to run over you’ll be asked to move to a higher plan
b) Snap sells additional 100GB data blocks for $15.
c) Orcon’s unlimited plan has fair use limits and the company pools available data. Read that as “if you’re a huge user you may run up against the limits of unlimited”.