The nation’s biggest telco Telstra has fired a new shot across the bow of its broadband rivals, allocating customers more value from existing bundled plans by doubling or more than doubling the amount of data quota they can use.

In a statement released today, the telco noted all of its home bundles had had their data quotas boosted; Its entry level 2GB plan has been boosted to 5GB, its 25GB plan has gone to 100GB, its 100GB plan has gone to 200GB, and its 200GB plan has been boosted to 500GB. The plans come with a Telstra telephone service included, as well as the company’s T-Box set-top box.

The complete details of the plans are available online at Telstra’s web site. They range from $89 to $159 in price per month, on a 24 month contract with a $35 upfront fee.

The company’s consumer executive director, Rebekah O’Flaherty, said the increase was the second for Telstra in a year (the company last bolstered its bundled quotas 12 months ago) and demonstrated how Australians’ use of the internet kept on growing.

“Telstra research last year found that the average Australian home had four net-connected devices. But in the past year, half of those homes have added at least one more,” O’Flaherty said. “We’ve seen an increase in activities such as movie downloads and video streaming via T-Boxes and internet connected TVs, particularly among younger families, on top of more traditional activities such as accessing news, weather and social networking.

“Telstra’s new bundles reflect what our customers tell us they want, as everyone from my grandmother to my daughter finds more and more ways to use the internet.”

Telstra customers who have a 13-digit account number are able to upgrade to the new bundle for free. It remains unclear, however, how the process will work for those with one of the old style of account numbers, however — believed to be a very small percentage of customers still on Telstra’s legacy billing platform. A Telstra spokesperson is clarifying the situation with respect to those cases.

The news still, however, leaves Telstra without a plan featuring a terabyte of included quota, despite the fact that most of Australia’s large ISPs launched such plans in late 2010. A number of other providers also offer ‘unlimited’ quota plans. Telstra’s plans are formally unlimited, as users will have their speed capped rather than pay for excess quota usage, but a number of other providers don’t feature the same speed cap when it comes to unlimited plans.

Image credit: Telstra