National broadband innovator Internode has thrown down the gauntlet to its rivals by launching excess-free, no-contract broadband deals for its Home broadband customers.

The 13-year-old company, which is widely recognised for its high quality of service, has also revised its business broadband plans to increase download thresholds and data transfer speeds with no increase in costs.

In a move that will shake up the fiercely competitive broadband market, Internode is offering Home Broadband customers complete cost certainty by eliminating excess fees that can add hundreds of dollars to an advertised low-cost broadband plan. All Internode's new plans have no contracted period and allow Internode customers to select their preferred phone carrier. Internode's move contrasts with competitors that advertise "$29.95 per month" broadband plans, and then charge customers 14 cents per megabyte (MB) excess fees once the customer has downloaded more than 200 MB of data in a month.

Internode managing director Simon Hackett said the company aimed to simplify its broadband plans by eliminating hidden costs. "We're giving customers one price for their plan with no sneaky add-ons in the monthly bill," he said. "As well as price certainty, we offer our customers contracts without fixed timeframes, so if we stop delivering value to them, then they can vote with their feet."

Standout features of the revamped Internode Broadband plans include:

• An excess-free Internode Starter Plan for $29.95 per month, with "shaping" kicking in after a download allocation of 500MB per month.
• A 33 per cent increase in monthly downloads for Internode Standard Plans, from 12 gigabytes (GB) to 16 GB.
• New broadband services aimed at home office and remote access application uses.

Internode has eliminated excess fees by applying "shaping" technology that slows download speeds to modem rates once the customer has exceeded a monthly download allocation. For the Starter Plan, this allocation is a massive 500MB of data downloads per month.

Mr. Hackett said that most customers would prefer price certainty to unrestricted broadband with the risk of a large bill at the end of the month. "If an Internode customer decides to change to a plan with a higher download limit, they can simply change plans online," he said. "Internode Broadband is about customer choice and plan transparency."

Internode's new Home Broadband Plan is great value, easy to understand and simple to work with. As well as its entry level plans, the company has introduced new plans for SOHO (Small Office Home Office), Server and VPN (Virtual Private Network) applications. The SOHO plans are headlined by a feature and performance upgrade to Internode's award-winning 'FlatRate' services - now in the SOHO table - with no price increase. It has also boosted download allocations for business ADSL plans by 150 per cent to between 10GB and 30GB.

The plan and price changes are sweetened further by Internode's unmetered access to great broadband content that includes services from the ABC and more than one terabyte of legal downloads from the Internode mirror servers and many streaming radio stations. Internode has also sharpened its pencil to improve benefits and reduce costs on a number of its dial-up and ISDN Internet access plans.

About Internode

Internode is a leading Australian broadband services and Internet services provider. Based in Adelaide, it is a premier provider of business-class Internet access and professional services to organisations throughout Australia. Internode founder Simon Hackett, also President of the SA Internet Association, is an Internet pioneer who was involved in AARNet, which brought the Internet to Australia's shores in the 1980s.