The Telstra Endless Data BYO plan will be available from this Thursday, the third of May and cost $69 on a 12-month contract, and allow you to use as much data as you want.
The plan offers customers unlimited calls and text as well as 40Gb of data – but once you reach the data limit you’ll be able to keep on going – just at a slower speed. On the Endless Data BYO plan customers will be limited to just 1.5Mbps for the remainder of the month – which Telstra says is still fast enough to stream video in standard definition, listen to music, browse the web and access social media.
Optus has been toying with the idea of unlimited mobile data with their Unleashed plans, but there doesn’t seem to be any mention of them on the Optus site at the moment. Telstra seems to be the first to really go all in on the idea of unlimited plans, and offer them to all users.
Group Executive of Telstra Consumer & Small Business, Vicki Brady, acknowledged the first for mobile customers saying
We know how important it is to our customers that they can access the fastest speeds available to them on our network. That’s why our unlimited plan comes with 40GB of data to enjoy at uncapped speeds, unlimited sports action, and then data capped at 1.5Mbps to get customers through the month if they need it.
Telstra customers signing up to the new plan will also be able to take advantage of other Telstra benefits including access to unlimited AFL and NRL streaming.
The plans go live on Thursday, so if you’re in the market for more data this may be a way to get what you need. That said, if Telstra is doing it, Vodafone and Optus may be about to open up some other offers to match.
Already been done and possibly better by Vivid Wireless offering unlimited 4G no lock in contracts – month to month @ $90 or $70 for 200 gb
Actually cheaper than I would expect from Telstra. Really starting to bring in the competition. Maybe it’s already the TPG effect starting.
A higher throttled rate would be nice, like 5Mbps?
That would be good! Maybe for additional $10 a month you can have a different throttling speed. Would be a good option IMO. Although for it to be workable would need to be chosen upfront of the 12 month contract and not allow customers to just pick and choose each month.
Would be good if you can connect to their network
“1.5Mbps for the remainder of the month – which Telstra says is still fast enough to stream video in standard definition”
Seems pretty optimistic 187Kbps is gonna have a fair bit of buffering youd think even with Standard Def
I have free Netflix, Stan and foxtel data streaming with Optus at 1.5Mbps and have no issues streaming SD content.
It’s basically like how unlimited home broadband started with limited speeds after reaching you data limit. Still surprising from Telstra though.
With Vodafone now joining in too, all three major carriers have unlimited mobile data options available. It’s a great move.
The Optus offering is still ‘selected’ customers only. Although I don’t see how they’ll be able to just ignore this and not make it generally available. I’m a bit surprised though, I would have thought the limited availability of the Optus offering would have meant the other two would have just ignored it because it was available to too few customers to be a serious issue.