The cheap cost of data in prepaid mobile plans in Australia has been dominating my thoughts this week – so much so that I penned two articles on the topic for my ‘day job’. On APCmag.com, I wrote about how much cheaper data is on a prepaid mobile plan compared to a year ago. Telstra was the big standout here; a year ago, a $30 recharge would have gotten you 10MB of data – barely enough for a day’s worth of email for me! Now, you can get just over 1GB (1050MB) for the same $30 recharge! Vodafone charged a pay as you go $2 per megabyte rate for all of its prepaid plans up until October last year (you can now get 500MB for a $29 recharge, plus unlimited access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FourSquare and LinkedIn), while Optus counted data in the same credit that calls and SMS come out of (Optus’ prepaid plans now have the same data value as Vodafone’s plans).
The other interesting story, which I wrote for PC and Tech Authority, is that carriers are now in fact offering more data on their prepaid plans than the equivalently-priced postpaid plans! It’s crazy, but true. With Telstra, for instance, you can get 3.3GB with a $50 recharge on its Pre-Paid Cap+, while its $49 Next G Cap postpaid plan only gives you a measly 1GB. It’s the same story with all of the other carriers except for 3 – which, to be honest, is pretty far behind with its data pricing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they overhauled their data pricing model in the near future!.
It kind of sucks that I’m locked into a postpaid plan now, with all of these awesome data deals going on. I easily use data on my phone more than calls and text messages, between email, web browsing, social networking, and the numerous apps that use the web to send data back and forth (Evernote, Dropbox, Android Market, Google Navigation, WhatsApp, etc). I’m on what’s perhaps the only truly unlimited plan in the country: Optus’ $129 Timeless Advantage plan (which you need to have an ABN for to quality as a ‘business user’), which not only offers unlimited calls, text and voicemail access, but also includes unlimited data use from my phone and 10GB of data for non-phone uses like tethering. I like having the freedom of using my smartphone without having to think about whether I’ll be going over my monthly credit limit or not, which I use to do a lot before I switched to an unlimited plan!
But if I wanted to spend less, going on prepaid would be perfect, as I could just keep on using the data until it ran out – no ugly excess usage fees (Optus charges 50c per megabyte on its postpaid plans when you go over your limit!), just the inability to access the Internet until you top-up your account again. I gave my partner an iPhone 4 for Christmas; he’s on Vodafone prepaid and only recharges $29 each time. The generous 500MB allotment means that he runs out of call credit way before he runs out of data, and luckily the data doesn’t disappear when the call credit is all up – he’s able to send me messages on WhatsApp and call me on Viber when he runs out of credit to use calls and text messages over the carrier network!
