Customers of ALDI Mobile, now’s the time to take a seat before you read what we have to tell you.
Ready? Good.
ALDIMobile, which once looked like the still-shining beacon in the land of ever-decreasing mobile value, with its offerings on the unlimited plan slashed further still. Launching with unlimited voice minutes and SMS and 5GB of data for $35 value, it seems that the failure of ispOne (and by extension, Kogan Mobile) began to take its toll.
First, the data inclusion was cut in half — from 5GB down to just 2.5GB. Still, for $35 a month, this amount of data on top of unlimited calls and SMS was still fairly reasonable. Citing some research on its customers’ usage habits — where most were using less than 1GB — ALDI justified this drop in inclusion.
Fast forward just one month, and the razor has been out again. Now, ALDI has truly removed the unlimited part of the $35 plan, reducing it to (up to) 2500 minutes (which is still well over 40 hours talk time), 2000 SMS, 500 MMS, and 2.5GB of data.
It’s important to bear in mind that these restrictions (data aside) have — in effect — been around since September, when ALDI introduced the same restrictions on a rolling 30 day period basis. They’ve now formalised this into the plan inclusions, so we’re not looking at a change so much as a different way of advertising what’s already allowed.
From one perspective, this package still offers fairly good value. On the Telstra network, you won’t see anything approaching this value from anyone else (well, from Boost or Telstra, no one else really sells Telstra stuff anymore), and even compared with some of the prepaid offerings on other carriers, this still isn’t too bad.
However, the other perspective is that users who had a ripping good deal when the Unlimited plan was announced now have significantly less value. No doubt there’ll be a lot of vitriol aimed ALDI’s way following this change, but in a mobile market dominated by three gargantuan players, and with MVNOs (as ALDIMobile is) seemingly dropping like flies over the last twelve months, this really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Ausdroid’s partner WhistleOut has a comparison of other ‘unlimited’ mobile plans which you can check out if you’re looking to move around.
I would like to say that I prefer the use of per Minute included value that you see in other countries. Get rid of the arbitrary $ figure that has small print per min call rates.
$1,000 value at $1 rates may as well be $1,000,000 at $1,000 per min call rates.
Seems Optus changed their plans when they relaunched their website this week as well
I seem to recall that Aldi’s plans are 3G only? They don’t get access to Telstra’s 4G network. Is that right?
Adam my mate has Aldi and he gets 4G
Pics or ban. Aldi only has 3g and its crippled to about 6mbit
I was on Aldi prepaid for for about 3 months, first on a Note 2 4G and then on a Note 3 4G and I can guarantee you that Aldi is not on the 4G network. They’re using Telstra’s 3G network and at best you’ll get around 850 kilobytes per second download speed. I’ve now ported out to Boost and at best I get just over 2 megabytes per second download speed and much better coverage. I’ve been told they use Telstra’s Next G network.
Again if you don’t need Telstra pennytel pwns
Bye Aldi *waves* Hey Boost! Here’s 2 sim cards, port me out babeeeeeeee!
Boost is much better for only $5 more pm. Full 3G speeds and full telstra coverage directly with telstra.
Thankfully they still do 2GB of data for $15 a month as an add on. I only topup $15 credit when I need to which is becoming less and less often.
For a $50 recharge on Telstra prepaid you could be getting 3.8gb of data and just under $1000 of cap value. Just another option.
The $15 top up I do is roughly every 1.5-2 months, so I’m paying no more than about $20 a month for data and calls. I hardly make any calls and only just so under the 2GB data.
Vodafone’s $30 cap can get you up to 10.8GB of data if you convert all the included value.
But you’re on the Vodafone network then, which where I am is patchy at best.
I average 40-60mbps at home but if you don’t get decent coverage, it’s not with it. Next best thing it’s Probably boost
Link? Thanks