Residential fibre plans 100/50Mbps

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”.