Telstra has announced a new raft of plans today, expanding their unlimited plan to a full range of plans including an option to pay $199 for a truly unlimited plan with no data limits.
The new range includes something called ‘Peace of Mind’ that’s basically giving you the unlimited data option from their previous unlimited plan, across their entire range. The Peace of Mind option is available on a limited range of plans with no additional cost, or on some plans for an additional $10 per month.
The addition of Peace of Mind is to give their users the freedom to use their smartphone or tablet without thinking about whether they will run out of data and incur excess data charges in Australia says Telstra CEO Andrew Penn.
As with the previous unlimited plan, Peace of Mind is capped at 1.5Mbps, which Telstra says is sufficient for ‘streaming video in standard definition on a smartphone, listening to music, browsing the web and accessing social media’. If 1.5Mbps isn’t fast enough for you, or your business needs then Telstra is still offering users the option to purchase additional data packs at $10/per GB for their plans.
Telstra isn’t offering the Peace of Mind option on all their plans, their new $49 SIM Only plan doesn’t have the option, but you do get 15GB of data included at full speed, but you can get Peace of Mind (it’s automatically included) on their $69 and $89 per month BYO SIM plans, with 30GB and 60GB of data (which can be downloaded at full speed) included respectively.
The new unlimited option with Peace of Mind is also available on a standard Mobile Plan and Mobile Lease Plans. There are five new tiers with the new plans, starting at $59 and running through $79, $99, $129 and their $199. Telstra will charge you an extra $10 per month
If you want to pair up with a mobile plan on lease or outright terms, tiers run at $59 (Small), $79 (Medium), $99 (Large), $129 (X-Large) or the new $199 ‘Ultimate’ tier. Telstra will charge you an additional $10 per month to include Peace of Mind with the $59, $79 and $99 plans but the $129 plan includes it for free. The $59 plan includes 3GB of data, the $79 plan includes 10GB of data, there’s 30GB of data on the $99 plan and the $129 plan includes 60GB of data.
The big news, though out of reach for most is the $199/per month plan which includes unlimited data at full Telstra 4GX speeds. It’s an expensive option for most people, but there will be people willing to pay that price. Telstra still has a ‘FairPlay policy’ applicable to all their plans, so we imagine if you go completely nuts you’ll probably hit a barrier.
If you want to check out the new range of plans, you can check them all out on the Telstra website.
$199 for an unlimited data service is pretty reasonable if it can be tethered. Telstra’s best mobile broadband connection costs $89 for 80GB. In most cases, 4GX download and upload speeds are better than NBN. So you can essentially replace your broadband connection with this.
Only really a broadband replacement if you can share the data with other SIMs and put one in a mobile broadband hotspot – otherwise the data leaves the house with you, which won’t be convenient for other devices, guests, when your phone is rebooting etc.
Looking at the Telstra site, looks like there are only 3 BYO plans – and data is not shareable with a second SIM on any of them?
so they will still throttle you if you trying to stream hd while playing games on their $199 plan?
No, you basically have unlimited data. The only throttling would be if you contravened their Fair Use Policy. In effect you’d have to be downloading massive amounts of data (say hundreds of GBs or even TBs) to be throttled.
A bit petty, but Unlimited isn’t unlimited if there are any T&Cs attached whatsoever.
I agree. Should never be able to call something ‘unlimited’ if it actually has limits… even at some point.