Spark will increase the data quotas for the majority of its home and many of its business broadband customers by 50 percent writes Stuart Corner for Computerworld New Zealand.

Spark will increase the data quotas for the majority of its home and many of its business broadband customers by 50 percent. New home customers for fibre and wireless broadband plans will also be hit by a price rise of $5 per month and business customers of $3 per month. These price rises will not be applied to existing home customers until September 2017 and to business customers until September 2018.

Home customers on a 40GB plan will receive a data increase to 60GB and those on an 80GB plan will get an increase to 120GB, across ADSL, VDSL, fibre and wireless broadband. Business customers on 30GB bundles will receive a data increase to 50GB and those on 80GB plans will get an increase to 120GB, across ADSL, VDSL and wireless broadband.The increases will apply only to customer on current plans, not those on old plans that are no longer offered.

Spark said that approximately 85 percent of Spark Home customers and over 99 percent of Spark Business customers would either receive additional data at no extra cost or would be affected by these changes.

Spark explained the price rises by saying that, as more customers used more data – and as more customers moved to unlimited plans – the cost to provide broadband services had increased. “First, the wholesale charges that ISPs like Spark pay lines companies on connections is increasing annually. Second, Spark has been investing in increased local and international data capacity,” the company said.