Cheap Broadband no contract and LOTS of Data

Cheap Broadband no contract and LOTS of Data….does a ‘beast’ like that even exist?

Well, up until 2-3 years ago, the answer to this was unfortunately “no”.

If you wanted your ADSL2+ connection to have a decent data allowance and reasonable price, you had to agree to ‘marry’ your Internet Service Provider for a period of anything between 18 to 24 months.

This is more than what some ‘real’ celebrity marriages last for and similar to those marriages, if you wanted to walk out you had to give your ‘partner’ (the ISP) a pound of flesh!

If you didn’t want to commit and preferred to stay ‘single and looking’, you had to resign yourself to paying higher prices and getting significantly lower data allowances.

Here at Spending Hacker, we hate contracts with a PASSION! We strongly believe that the most important freedom you need to always defend as a consumer is your freedom to choose.

Therefore, up until a few years ago, we had to resign ourselves to living with a lower data allowance than our ‘married’ friends.

Well, luckily for us all. This is no longer the case.

More and more ISPs now offer ADSL2+ plans that have no contract and yet still come with a decent data allowance and reasonable price. However, many of those still come with various sneaky costs such as connection fees, hardware fees and fees for exceeding your data allowance. Many also require you to ‘bundle’ your phone service with them or get ‘Naked‘ .

Well, as we don’t like sneaky fees and don’t like to make commitments of any kind as consumers, we would like to suggest to you two different options that have none of that. The first of these options is a time limited offer while the other is a standard and ongoing one (and the one I currently use myself).

Option 1: Belong

Belong is a new wholly-owned subsidiary of none other than a ‘little known’ telco called….Telstra! We never thought that we will ever actually recommend on this site something coming from the big T but this deal is simply too good to refuse.

Belong aims to deliver good value Broadband for the “price sensitive consumer” (yep, that’s the wording they use in their own press kit) so Belong is to Telstra kinda like what Jetstar is to Qantas.

Not only does Belong offer much better value plans than what you can get from Telstra and their BigPond Service directly but all their plans have no contract and do not require bundling.

Another good thing about their plans is the fact there are no extra usage charges. If you exceed your data allowance, they will simply reduce the speed of your connection (called ‘shaping’ in industry jargon) to 256Kbps which is still respectable as it will basically give you the lower scale of an ADSL1 connection. Your normal speed will be restored at the start of the next billing period.

Most other ISPs who do the same thing (i.e. ‘shaping’) will either reduce your speed to that of a dial-up connection or block you outright.

Now, normally Belong charges $80 to activate a new broadband connection and that fee would have been a ‘deal breaker’ for us.

However, until 30/06/2026 they run a promotion whereby they waive the Broadband activation fee, don’t charge the $59 standard phone line activation fee and supply you with a wireless broadband modem for $1 including shipping (yep, ONE DOLLAR, that is not a typo).

As usual, their plans are all month to month (there is no contract) and you will never be slugged with extra usage charges for exceeding your data allowance.

This makes this offer very appealing to those of you who:

• Recently moved to a new place and want to get Broadband installed. If you sign up to Belong as part of this promotion, you will save yourself a motsa by not having to pay for phone line activation (provided your place already has the Telstra cabling in place) or Broadband connection and will also get a brand spanking new generation ADSL2+ modem for a dollar.
• Are unhappy with their current broadband speeds and/or data allowance and wanna give a different provider a try with no risk and no cost (provided obviously you are not on a contract with your current ISP). Given Belong runs on the Telstra infrastructure directly, it is highly likely that for most customers, download speeds would be better.
• Just want a new modem for free (ok, one dollar ), are not on a contract with their current ISP and don’t mind trying out a new provider. For those of you who are technically minded, the full specs of the modem provided by Belong can be found .
• Are not very ‘technical’ and don’t want to have to mess around with settings and configurations. The Belong modem comes fully pre-configured and all you will need to do is plug it in the electricity and phone sockets, enter the username and password and browse away.

As all plans are with no contract, you can always leave after a month if you’re not happy and you get to keep the modem as well the phone line you got connected for FREE (if you moved into a new premises).

Belong offers only two plans: $50 p/m for 70GB download quota or $60 p/m for 250GB. Given the very small difference in price and the huge variation in download quota, we feel that the $50 p/m plan is probably a decoy marketing trick.

You will need to have a fully functioning phone line on the Telstra network in order to use these plans (Belong doesn’t do Naked) and that will cost you an extra $20 p/m which also gives you unlimited local calls, as well as calls to 1223, 13, 1300, 1800 and 000 numbers.

You don’t have to ‘bundle’ the phone line with your plan and are free to source it elsewhere but given $20 p/m is actually cheaper than the cheapest standalone phone line plan currently available on the market (Telstra’s ) in which you also have to pay extra for your local and 1300 calls, we think the one from Belong is pretty good value and it is actually worth your while to ‘bundle’ in this instance.

So if you like what you read here and want to give Belong a try, make sure you do it before 30/06/2026 because once this current promotion end and you have to pay connection fees again (and don’t get the modem for a dollar), this is no longer a good deal and we would not recommend it.

Belong is not yet available nationally and service is restricted to mostly metropolitan areas but you can easily check whether it has already been rolled out where you live by typing in your landline number (if you have one already) or address on their website.

If it is available, you can sign-up online and the modem (fully pre-configured) will be delivered to you within 3-4 business days.

The NBN Option

If you are lucky enough to be living in an area where the NBN has already been activated, the current promotional offer from Belong offers you the absolute best value NBN plan currently available in Australia!

Belong offers two NBN plans: 100GB data allowance for $50 a month and 500GB data allowance for $70 a month. That is impressive and actually makes me personally a bit sad that I am not in an NBN-enabled area .

Like with the ADSL2+ plans above, there is no contract and if you exceed your allowance, your speed is simply reduced to 256Kbps until the start of the next billing period.

Also like with the ADSL2+ plans, until 30/06/2026 you get the modem for a dollar and there are no service installation or activation fees. You also don’t need to have an active landline to get this service as the NBN service runs on a different infrastructure and is not reliant upon Telstra’s copper wires.

If you already have access to the NBN, this offer is probably as good as it gets for now!

Option 2: Club Telco

If you already have an active landline and your own ADSL2+ modem (that you are happy with), this could potentially be better value for you than option 1 above. This is also true if Belong is not yet available where you live.

Similar to Belong, Club Telco’s plans do not have a contract and they don’t charge any Broadband service activation fees.

They also offer unlimited data for less than the cheaper plan with Belong - $40 p/m . If you are in a regional area, you cannot get service with Belong but can still get Club Telco’s unlimited data plan for $60 p/m.

They also offer a 10GB data plan for very slightly less but this one is definitely a decoy marketing trick so is not even worth considering.

Like with Belong, you will need to have a fully functioning landline on the Telstra network in order to get broadband with this mob as they don’t do ‘Naked‘. You can either get your landline plan from someone else or choose to bundle it with your broadband connection with Club Telco. Their cheapest phone plan is $30 p/m and does not come with any calls included but If you ‘bundle’ they will give you a 5% discount on your overall monthly bill.

However, there is one important ‘catch’ with Club Telco that you must be aware of: You will have to pay them a $50 “Membership fee” when you first sign up and then every 12 months from then (as this fee is annual).

Club Telco tries to put a positive spin on this fee by highlighting all the benefits you get as a ‘member’ like being able to pay your bills with any credit card (including Amex) without a surcharge and having access to their ‘exclusive’ consumer discount club.

We feel that this is really ‘hogwash’ and nothing more than a marketing trick to get some more money out of you. However, after crunching the numbers, we feel that even with this annual fee, the deal still stacks up and is of outstanding value.

Here is our reasoning:

The cheapest standalone landline plan currently on the market is Telstra’s but it is only available to those who subscribe to Telstra’s own ADSL service. The next one up (Telstra ) will set you back $36 p/m which is more than what you would pay with Club Telco’s basic landline service ($30 p/m).

This means ‘bundling’ your landline and broadband service with Club Telco does make sense.

If you bundle and are living in a metro area, you would pay $70 a month on which you get a 5% discount every month (i.e. $3.50 a month). This means that over the course of a year, you get a discount of $42 which offsets the $50 “membership fee” you pay per annum. This means you are only effectively out of pocket by $8 or less than a dollar a month. We can live with that!

If you bundle and are living in a regional area, you would pay $90 a month on which you get a 5% discount every month (i.e. $4.50 a month). This means that over the course of a year, you get a discount of $54 which completely offsets the $50 “membership fee” you pay per annum. You actually end up with a $4 ‘profit’ every year.

So, do you think that works for you? If so, you can check the availability of their service in your area by entering your landline number here.

Unfortunately, Club Telco does not offer the option to sign-up for their services online so you will have to call them on 13 8352 and sign-up over the phone. However, before you go and do that, we have a little ‘hack’ for you that can save you half of your first year’s “membership fee”.

Club Telco has a “Refer a Friend” program whereby they give you $25 credit on your first bill if you quote the name and customer number of an existing Club Telco member when you sign-up. That existing member will also get a $25 credit on their account but given that the new customer would not have received that credit if they just signed-up and did not quote a ‘referral’ from an existing member, we feel that this is a win-win proposition even though it is quite cumbersome in the way it is implemented.

So, if you do decide to sign-up and want a $25 credit to your account to go towards the first year’s ‘membership fee’, feel free to quote my name (Michael Ginsburg) and customer number 7728889 when signing up over the phone.

As we mentioned in one of our previous posts, going direct is usually NOT a smart way and you will NOT get the absolute best terms. It is better to use a referral whenever possible.

Another way that you can save yourself an extra 5% off your bill is to pay your invoice at an Australia Post outlet through their PostBillPay service and using the right debit card.

Any questions? Just hit us up in the box below.