Optus (Aus) : Far-fetched Deals not all they’re cracked up to be.

Optus have been making a big pitch with their new deals featuring Fetch TV. The ads must have had a more-than-sublimal effect on me because i went and cancelled my phone/internet package with Exetel and reverted back to Optus.

I’m one of the lucky ones to have NBN at home and probably the only person in Australia who has changed NBN provider twice. The reasons for leaving Exetel will be explained in another post but without the lure of the current Optus deal I may have hung on later.

Since my teenage step-daughter left home, we’ve averaged about 100GB per month – which is down on there previous year. So what did I get?

200GB per month, with the option to ‘double the data’ for free, twice per year.
Home phone (Even though i don’t make outbound calls with it, I need a home phone in order to receive calls from overseas relatives who can’t work out how to use Skype).
A set-top box PVR with Fetch TV (30 movies per month).

The base cost is $90 per month on a 24 month contract, but I added a $10 speed pack in order to receive tier 2 speeds of 50mbps download speed.

The selling point for me was the Fetch TV.

Co-incidentally, I also upgraded my TV at the same time, which, if I’d thought it through properly, would probably have influenced my decision to change to Optus.

Why?

Because the new TV (LG) ended up having most of the functions inbuilt that Fetch TV offers anyway – e.g. recording of TV shows, TV guide, movie rental, extra channels.

30 free movies per month appeared attractive but the titles available so far have been at least 5-6 years old – some classics – but didn’t do much to excite me. Of course, watching anything through Fetch TV doesn’t affect my download limit, but then there are other providers who offer larger download limits for cheaper prices.

There are some good reasons for choosing Optus – and I’m happy to have changed away from Exetel – but Fetch TV is probably not the best reason.