Optus is saying an awful lot of ‘Yes’ lately and today it’s saying yes to Family Sharing. Family Sharing is Optus way of letting you share your mobile data into one large bucket that all your family can draw from.
From today, all customers who sign up onto one of Optus’ new plans will be eligible to pool their data into one bucket, but existing users can also get in on the action by moving to one of the new mobile plans. As well as the access to Family Sharing, all Optus customers will also receive unlimited national and international text, as well as national talk time on their plans. All the plans using Family Sharing in a household will be bundled into one bill making for ease of planning.
While SMS usage alerts are now sent to customers alerting of potential over-use of data, tools will be provided by Optus to monitor data usage on the new Family Sharing option. Optus customers can review data usage on the Optus website through the ‘My Account’ page, or they can install the My Optus app from Google Play (or the app store). This will enable families to watch their data use and add more data if necessary – which you can do for just $10 per GB.
There’s a big reason for doing this says Optus Managing Director, Marketing and Product, Vicky Brady. According to Ms Brady, Optus has found that ‘68% of our My Plan customers are using less than 50% of their monthly data inclusions’. The Family Shared plan also works well to benefit younger and older users, with further Optus research showing that ’18-20 year olds use 2.7 times more data than those over 45 years old’.
There’s also a big bonus for people with a number of SIM-enabled devices. According to Optus, ‘each family member can connect up to five extra mobile broadband devices, like SIM-ready tablets, to take advantage of the shared data – there’s just a one-off $5 fee per device’. These mobile broadband devices don”t get text or calls, but that’s really not a problem for most people and at $5 per device, that’s not a bad deal.
Of course with all this extra data around, you want to get in on the 6-month Netflix subscription that Optus is offering to new sign-ups who connect to a new plan before July 5th.
You can find out more about Family Sharing on the optus.com.au/familysharing website
