I have been using ADSL for the better part of 10 years and in that time the meaning of best ADSL plan has changed quite a bit. Early on in the Australian ADSL landscape, best broadband often meant stable, reliable and not charging like a wounded bull. As more broadband ISP’s entered the market, best ADSL plans often meant biggest download quota, which subsequently became cheapest ADSL plans and these days the best broadband plans provide a mixture of competitive pricing, larger download limits, more flexible usage and even the option of bundling and VoIP services.

For the majority of my time using broadband ADSL, I have been using Internode. They have been providing, what I would consider, to be near faultless ADSL service over that time. They have a comprehensive network throughout Australia, which has proved itself to be very fast, low latency and tolerant to network outages. I’ve been so impressed with their service, I have lost count of how many people I would have referred to Internode and I stand by my recommendation as well – I have moved house four times in the last 5 years and each time I have chosen to reconnect my broadband with Internode at my new address.

While I use the internet heavily at work and at home, I no longer download a huge amount of data – so a lighter weight plan has suited me for at least the last five years. However since Hugo arrived in September 2008, the monthly usage has steadily been creeping up and in the last six months, our monthly usage has skyrocketed. The sharp increase of late, I’m quite sure is directly related to an increase in rich content such as songs and videos that Hugo likes to watch and my increasing use of YouTube. That increase had finally resulted in hitting our monthly 10Gb data limit and subsequently the shaping of our 1500kbit ADSL connection back to about 64kbit.

Like anyone that uses the internet regularly on a broadband internet connection, using a slow internet connection is frustrating and nearly intolerable unless you really need something. To make sure that doesn’t happen again next month, I went to the Internode web site and started reviewing their plans. My current plan, which has been grandfathered is $49.95/month and provides 10Gb of data. If I could avoid it, I didn’t want to spend more than that – it feels like a sweet spot for pricing in my opinion.

Internode had a newer version of my current plan, which was $49.95/month and provided 20Gb of data but I hadn’t bothered to upgrade to it because I had no need. I was about to upgrade to that plan, when I noticed a new plan called Easy Broadband. The basic concept behind Easy Broadband is that there is just one plan option, no more confusing choices and having to guess how much data you’ll need per month and worrying about topping it up if you run out. It comes in fast or faster configurations – which equates to at least 1500kbit and if ADSL2+ is available – you’ll get that automatically as well. It costs $49.95/month and provides a whopping 50Gb of data to use anytime of the day – not a peak/off-peak plan like a lot of ISPs provide. The only real difference between it and the other ADSL plans I’ve been using is Easy Broadband counts uploads and downloads, my existing plans only counted downloads.

When you couple the price point, a very respectible 50Gb of data per month with Internode’s impressive quota free unmetered content – the Easy Broadband plan seemed like a perfect fit. After using less than 10Gb per month for a number of years, we’ve now increased that to 50Gb – or in actual download terms probably about 45Gb since it counts up and downloaded data. I think it has to be one of the best ADSL broadband plans available in the market place at the moment and when it is backed by Internode, you can be nearly guaranteed that you’re broadband ADSL will just work.