There are strong rumours swirling on the Internet that Telstra’s strongly hinted new plans will have a minimum price of $50 a month with no lock in contract.
If this is true it means that Telstra is following the lead of Vodafone which made the same changes in mid August 2017 to rip up the idea of long-term fixed contracts.
Rumour is also that Telstra will ditch controversial lease plans which have been described in the past by Vodafone’s Ben McIntosh as:
The equivalent of paying off someone else’s mortgage and never getting to own the house”.
If the rumours are true the four expected options for Telstra mobile customers that will be announced this week will be: $50, $60, $80, $100 a month.
Telstra will use their 5G first mover advantage and larger network coverage area as one of the justifications for charging more than their competitors.
All of these $50 and up plans will be casual month to month plans with no lock-in contract. Customers will be able to move in between the plans anytime without having to payout out the bundled phone as they have to at present.
On the plus side the $10/GB data overage fees will be removed and Peace of Mind data (throttling to 1.5mbit/s) will be included in all the monthly billed plans as a sweetener to ease the pain of increased monthly fees.
Telstra need to keep their shareholders happy and the rumours are that this change in mobile plans is aimed at increasing the all important Average revenue per user (ARPU) to $50 or more.
It is unclear whether port in credits of $10/month will also be removed in this new plans refresh. These have up until now been applied quite often by Telstra and Telstra dealer sales staff to try and entice customers away from Optus and Vodafone. If the aim is to increase ARPU then the odds are port in credits will be gone or much harder to obtain.
These rumours may or may not be true, we will find out later this week however they make sense in the context of Telstra’s continued aim on simplifying their product offerings, cutting jobs, slashing internal fixed costs and aiming to increase the amount of money each customer pays them.
$50 pm as a minimum?
So $600 pa for the base level service? That’s way too high, basically it should almost be the maximum rate, with the minimum being ~$20 pm. And trying to do it off a ‘superior’ service that most don’t need really doesn’t sound like a winner.
Justifying $600pa means providing a free, decent, phone in the package.
One of my friend works in Telstra and he told me that it is going to be happened very soon.
A smooth move on Telstra’s part, the long lock in contracts and exit fees are a pain, month to month is brilliant (ability to move up down according to usage needs to great too) with month to month billing like byo plan. (I’d be happy to pay a retainer like month in advance)
My other concern is, can device/s be added to plan, service plus and/or device repayment. 12-24-36 month. Latest tech allowed to pay off internet free providing person/s business/es stay with telco, if leave then balance of device payable.
Hi Dwayne
Yes it seems the new plans will allow device repayments to be split over time. Not sure of details. We will report as soon as we find out
If you think of Telstra’s plans as including the Belong ones, this would mean no overlap.
There is no mention of included data in these plans.. $10;a gig is a rip off for exceeding the limit..and its not able to be cancelled they just keep adding on without advising you are iver
Did you read the article?
There is no mention of included data in these plans.. $10;a gig is a rip off for exceeding the limit..and its not able to be cancelled they just keep adding on without advising you are iver
But it’s still Telstra! Went back after a 15 year hiatus and hated every minute of the 12 month contract. Constant contact to get them to fix the product, numerous hours spent with their help desk. While they ended up refunding me a lot of money and then reducing my monthly commitment it was just way too hard…if I wanted to train help desk people in the products Telstra offers I would have a job there.
It’s true as a Telstra mobile customer I have occasionally experienced frustrating customer service from their call centres, getting transferred to different people over and over
The minimum spend is so high. Surely to be worthwhile phones must be heavily subsidised. Currently paying $39/month for 30GB data on Telstra (no phone on contract).
I’m on the same Sim only plan as you and I would only pay $50 for 50GB of data or more otherwise I’ll switch to Optus or Vodafone in November.
As Robert commented above, Telstra would rather customers spending less than $50 switch to Belong prepaid, Boost etc