Telstra reveals prepaid wireless broadband shake-up

By Ry Crozier on Oct 20, 2010 3:25 PM
Filed under Telco/ISP

Per megabyte charge model introduced.

Telstra has raised the stakes in the prepaid battle by introducing a wireless broadband recharge option with "up to" 10 GB of mobile data, valid for a year.

The $150 10GB recharge puts Telstra in competition with the likes of Vodafone, which offers 12GB for the same price and expiry period.

Optus' largest recharge was 9.2GB for $130 with a 186-day expiry period.

Telstra has announced it will charge per megabyte for the product - following Vodafone's lead. According to its most recent product announcements, Optus charged customers in 10 MB increments.

iTnews reported last month that the new prepaid wireless broadband plans would be the first by Telstra to drop per kilobyte charging, instead adopting a per megabyte charge for data.

While Telstra's old prepaid wireless broadband plans offered a concrete data quota, the new plans denoted that the quota was "up to" a specified amount - a result of the new charging model.

A Telstra spokesman told iTnews last month that "usage is recorded per session, not per download, and this change will bring us in line with the market."

According to a carrier website, the average text email size was 6 Kilobytes "for the initial view".

If a prepaid user initiated a session only to check one email of 6 Kilobytes and then logged out, they would still be charged a megabyte of data.

Likewise if they checked 20 emails - 120 Kilobytes - and logged out, it would still cost them 1,024 Kilobytes of data quota.

Telstra reveals prepaid wireless broadband shake-up

5 comments in this discussion

"How is this now illegal how we are being screwed by all the telcos. 1mb increments from telstra so their quotas can appear bigger, worse from optus with their 10mb blocks crap. How is it legal ..."

By Johnny

Tags

vha, vodafone, hutchison, australia, optus, telstra, prepaid, wireless, broadband

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Comments: 5

eddiedotcom Oct 20, 2010 3:52 PM	seriously??? so now every email that gets pushed to my phone / ipad will be 1meg???? searches for better Nice work Telstra.. good way to lose more customers...
pameacs Oct 20, 2010 4:20 PM	Nice assumption in the article of 6kb a view, this depends on how people use their mail. If it is a blackberry service or the person has an IMAP account that might be the case, however the person was to use POP3 then each time they log into mail it will be however big their new messages are in their inbox. depending on the attachments in their that could be megs and megs. Also did Telstra confirm the statement of each session will charge a full MB as a minimum or are they just going to change for that each time you commence to use the next MB. This would be tantamount to false and misleading advertising on the carriers part if they say we charge for MB but in full MB blocks by session so reading a single email might cost a MB. Borderline dubious if not clearly explained in the ad. There is nothing on the Telstra website to suggest this about charging by the session. Could be a lot of claims at the TIO if the ITnews contact is correct.
rycrozier Oct 20, 2010 4:39 PM	@eddie - Only applies to prepaid wireless broadband plans. @pameacs - Telstra's unique selling proposition with these plans was previously that they were charged per kilobyte. The example is there to illustrate how that might (in an extreme case) affect data quota.
jamiebeans Oct 25, 2010 3:31 AM	Telstra’s new prepaid wireless rates can hardly be considered a “shake-up.” The only significant change is the increase from 4GB to 10GB of data on a $150 recharge. Combined with the extension of the expiry period from 180 days to 365 days this will be an attractive recharge amount for those who use their connection only now and again throughout the year. For those who use more data the data rate hasn’t really changed. For $80 and $100 you still get the same amount of data, the only thing that’s changed is the increased expiry periods. So those using more than 3GB per month are still essentially paying the same amount. If you use the $150 recharge over one month you get 10GB which lowers your data rate slightly, but $150 for one month is a lot to pay for Internet (particularly for just 10GB). Telstra is now only marginally behind its competition in prepaid wireless value following this announcement. Value will have to improve across the board to service regular Internet users, some of whom rely on wireless connections as they are unable to access a fixed broadband connection.
Johnny Oct 25, 2010 10:10 AM	How is this now illegal how we are being screwed by all the telcos. 1mb increments from telstra so their quotas can appear bigger, worse from optus with their 10mb blocks crap. How is it legal to charge for data we didnt use, regardless of whether its in the contract, how is the tio allowing companies to artificially inflate their quota size to confuse the hell out of consumers when all companies charge at different rates. Its simply not in the best interests of conaumers.