The Optus 3G Home Zone – the new way in order to help solve its mobile woes. So what is it? Well, it’s a device that creates a semi-mobile phone tower so your mobile device can use it to make calls or receive 3G data. As a long-time Optus customer, I just have one gripe with it, a very big gripe with it. It’s the fact that I have to pay extra for it just for five bars of 3G data.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtIii1dfbtg
The Optus 3G Home Zone costs $25 per month, or $5 per month if you have a plan worth $59 or above. Yes, if you have struggled with this problem in your house – like me – you will have to pay for the privilege of having decent coverage. Don’t forget, this is on top of your monthly plan and your mobile phone repayments. Charging me for the privilege to actually get my emails via 3G over the BlackBerry connection, or to make decent calls in a crappy mobile network area? Wow, Optus, I thought you never could get any lower.
Oh and don’t forget the cancellation fee – yes, apparently, it still belongs to Optus (for the 2 years you have it). The fee is $300. So, Optus, let’s recap. You are charging me $25/$5 a month in order to help you have decent 3G coverage and you’re going to still retain ownership – despite the fact that I would like to still be on your network (until my contract expires) – until I decided to pull out and charge me $300 for it.
Why am I ranting? Well, Optus recently offered this product to me about this after I recently complained about my 3G data at my house and I wanted out. I’ve had enough of them, and I really want to move – but the mobile provider from hell refused to do so, despite it was a breach of contract, over some technical loophole. Don’t worry, I wasn’t suckered into the deal of getting the product, but then I thought that others would be suckered in to it.
If you are not getting 3G data speeds, it could be due to that your house is a black spot. I don’t know about you, but I rather want Optus to actually invest in money in trying to get rid of these black spots in their network coverage. How about that Optus?
Plus, if I need to do such a thing, I rather pay for Skype credit, turn off the 3G connection and use the mobile app to do my calls over Wi-Fi that is connected to my broadband internet connection. That is a far cheaper alternative to Optus’ plan because it you don’t need to repay every month – you pay as you need to recharge. In addition, I’m not stuck in a two year contract that would require me to pay $300 to cancel if I want to move to another telco (I don’t know, how about Telstra. I mean they have coverage around most of Australia, like my house!).
If you get your network working without me actually paying for the stupid device, then I’ll be happy. Heck, I’ll even be happy with your almost-rude customer support staff – I just want my data connection to work.