After much umming and ahhing I finally decided to get a wireless broadband card (ie a wireless PC card that connects to 3G and CDMA phone networks). Although Telecom’s deal is way more expensive than its nearest competitor Whoosh (who basically offers about ten times the bandwidth for the same price), it does at least offer very broad coverage, so I figure than it’s probably better to go with an expensive option that works than a cheap one that doesn’t. Still, it would be nice if they took into account that simply visiting a telco’s homepage these days can eat up close to a megabyte of that precious, metered bandwidth, so maybe offering nothing higher than a 400MB/month $99 plan is a little mean.

The good thing about this plan is that I bought the modem privately and so didn’t have to sign up for a contract to get it connected, so if I decide it’s not the way to go I can just cancel my account and sell it on to someone else.

BTW I thought Telecom’s pricing was mean, but Telstra (Australia) is even worse– $99 buys just 200MB!