In the wake of the recent data leak, Optus is doing all it can to dissuade its customers from leaving. One new feature they may add is a “Boost.” Customers can pay a small fee to have a stronger signal or a faster internet connection.
This article will cover what this means and why it’s not as grand as Optus seem to think.
When you might need a boost
We’ve all been in a situation where you really need the internet to work, but it doesn’t. For example, if you’re at a crowded football game, and you need to contact your friends so you can meet, but because so many other people are also trying to reach their friends, the network gets clogged.
Or you’re working from home and have some vital work you need to complete, but the internet is too slow to get anything done! Optus believes they have a solution to this, boosting. This is where customers can pay extra money to have their internet or mobile signals “boosted.”
Optus’ Mobile Boost
When your signal is spotty, Optus wishes to offer a “Signal Boost” for their Optus prepaid customers. For $2 an hour, your signal will be in the top speed bracket for the hours you pay for, overtaking the Optus customers who have not paid for this feature. This way, those needing a better signal can pay to have it, but those who are happy to wait for the signal to improve are still welcome to do so.
Currently, this feature is still in beta mode. The way it works presently is that those signed up for the scheme get five free 1-hour boosts per month. However, if the beta testing proves successful, they will start charging those with Optus phones $2 per hour.
Optus’ Internet Boost
This feature could be ideal for those signed up for one of Optus Internet’s NBN plans, which provide home internet. With this feature, for $5, a customer can get maximum speeds on their home internet connection for 24 hours. Although, there is a slight catch. The definition of “maximum” speed will vary depending on the connection type. For example, those with Fibre Optic cables can expect faster internet than those with old copper telephone wires.
Optus is not the first.
Although this may seem like a new and innovative idea, much like me during math class back in the day, Optus appears to be copying from other companies.
Two small internet providers in Australia, Exetel, and SuperLoop, already have a ” Superboost ” feature on some of their home internet plans. Although this feature doesn’t fully maximize internet speeds, it will move you to the next speed tier. Subscribers to the scheme get five free 1-hour boosts a month. If they don’t use all their boosts within that month, they roll over into a boost bank that can hold up to 30 1-hour boosts.
Even though boosting with Exetel and Superloop won’t give you speeds as fast as an Optus boost, from a price perspective, it’s still much cheaper. When you look at it via Price-Per-GBPS, it’s remarkable how much cheaper it is.
Potential Dangers of allowing people to pay to boost.
Many telcos already have a feature that allows some customers to have faster and more secure internet or signal than others. However, you might have yet to hear of this feature because it’s not higher-paying customers who get the better signal but emergency services. If the top speed bracket is used by whoever pays for it rather than those who need it most (such as emergency service workers), it could prevent people from getting the vital help they need.
Conclusion
When I worked at Vodafone in the UK, I became aware of their HLR – High-Level Relay – that’s the thing your phone call is connected to when you get on the network. This is some innovation from an Australian telco, and it should be commended. In the UK at the time, there were 15 levels of priority for attached devices. One ramification was that the emergency services were put closer to the top of the priority list. So, if there was a disaster or terrorist attack and the network got clogged, the police and ambulance workers could still complete their calls.
Optus’ new scheme either uses this facility or one of the clever aspects of 5G technology, which allows for packages on the network to be prioritized in certain circumstances to deliver what could be a valuable service for users. It’s like paying a toll on the road to get there faster if you’re in a hurry – and we’ve all done that.
What it does, however, is open Optus up to a marketing problem. Telstra has just finished bragging in their TV adverts about their mobile services’ security. That is likely to have triggered, in the minds of some Australians, thoughts about Optus’ data breach. Similarly, Optus is offering people a facility to boost their network speeds – Telstra may well respond with – we don’t need to do that. We’re the fastest anyway.