Tennyson Inlet Broadband Cost Comparison

As most of you will know, there is now another option for home broadband after the Rural Connectivity Group (RCG) installed their tower. For many people this may be a better option than the old copper ADSL.

Here’s a quick comparison of some of the 4G (RCG) broadband plans available in Tennyson Inlet (a Penzance address was used). Lets us know if you find any better deals and we’ll add it.

At the moment, Full Flavour and Farmside seem to have the best deals ( $80 per month unlimited).

The rural fixed wireless cost (per month as at 13 June 2023) for the big three are graphed here for someone with “average” data usage. (ComCom report an average data usage of 330 GB per month in 2021.)

Usually a landline option is available, but we have excluded the landline in this comparison.

Important note about modem position. Iron roofs can partially block the signal, so its generally best to have your modem where it has a view of the cell tower. (Mainly an issue in Penzance.)

If you happen to be non-average then the results may be different. Below are some graphs for high and low users.

Spark

Spark offers multiple plans with various monthly data limits (40GB, 60GB, 200GB, 350GB) . It is also possible to buy additional data as required. Selecting the most cost effective plan for your situation could be tricky, and we suspect that many people will end up on the wrong one despite the best of planning.

We were told in the Spark shop that an external antenna would be required and that there would be a 24 month contract. We should have asked how much the installation would cost, but we’d lost interest by this stage.

For those with extremely low broadband usage, Spark offers some interesting 40GB options: Portable broadband and Basic Wireless Broadband. (However in some circumstances with low data usage it may cheaper to hotspot from your phone and use mobile data instead.)

Farmside (owned by One NZ)

The plans shown on their web site didn’t look particularly good (eg 200GB for $96/month). However when we called they offered an unlimited plan for $79.99/month.

Full Flavour (a NZ retailer specialising in rural)

$80/month unlimited. The deal is not published on their website, so call them.

2Degrees

The Rural Wireless (4G) broadband plan comes with 170GB of data for $85. If you want to purchase additional data, you can do so in blocks of 10GB ($20), 30GB ($30) and 50GB ($35).

There are monthly discounts available: