Telstra BigPond has announced massive drops in pricing for its high-end Next G plans today, and has removed excess fees from its 25GB fixed broadband plans.

The high end Next G plans have dropped as much as $70/month, with the Mobile 3GB plan now $114.95/month. The Relocatable 3GB plan has dropped to a similar price of $109.95/month. The Mobile 1GB plan has also dropped in price by $30/month.

Unfortunately for most users, the prices for low-end plans have not changed. However, the Mobile 200MB and 1GB plans are no longer capped at 256/128, and will instead be capable of around 3Mbit/s downstream speeds for the same price. The 500MB plan also appears to have been removed.

With all the competition in the 3G space however, the prices still don't quite meet the specials from competitors such as 3 and Vodafone. It will remain to be seen if these competitors can keep up their heavy discounting in the long term.

In the fixed broadband realm, BigPond has created new Liberty plans with 25GB quota. BigPond uses "Liberty" to describe plans that shape to 64Kbps speed once the data quota is used, rather than using $150/GB excess fees. The new 25GB plans are also between $10-20/month cheaper than before, depending on whether they are cable or ADSL. However, the upload speed on the new cable 25GB plan is now 128Kbps, instead of the 256Kbps it was before.

Links:

• Telstra Media Release  (Telstra, 13 Dec 2007)