ISP Snap lays down the gauntlet

We love data.  Like a fat kid at your local KFC, we'll eat as much as we can, for as little dollars as we can get away with.

Vodafone lead the charge in July last year with doubling their data allowances on fixed line broadband.  This month finally saw NZ's largest ISP play catch-up, with Telecom increasing most of their Total Home packages by 2-3 times. Not to be outdone, Orcon announced boosts to their Genius (their bundled naked DSL + VoIP offering) plan this week, with the biggest being 1TB for $199.

In the unlimited space, Maxnet launched the "exclusive nightclub" of the ISPs - there's a queue and break the rules and the bouncers throw you out.  Slingshot is doing the same, but operating more of a country pub that's over capacity with some unlucky punters leaving due to poor performance (surprise, surprise).

In my mind, Snap is leading the charge with the data add-ons announced on Wednesday - $70 used to buy an extra 100GB, now it buys a ridiculous 550GB (that's $0.13/GB).  One could argue that their base naked-DSL offering of $60 for a paltry 10GB is pathetic, but combined with their biggest data add-on, 560GB for $130 isn't too bad.  I'm not so sure if Snap are proud of this announcement as it's buried deep within their site, on their news page (one would thing they'd be singing it from the mountain tops).

I am curious as to what's triggered all these big jumps in data all around the same time - have all the ISPs renegotiated their contracts with the Southern Cross cable or just a big strange coincidence? 

Absent in all of this is TelstraClear, with their camp being strangely silent - they are either working on something massive, or have nothing planned (I am confident of the latter).

For those of us on a diet, and care about our online carbon footprint, there's always pay-as-you-use provider Xnet - $1.30/GB - 10x more expensive than the fatties on Snap but better for the waistline.