Only Boost has this. All other rebadged services are Telstra Wholesale. Boost has the same network (and same CSRs, same support services and even billing is through Telstra). Because Belong is essentially a Telstra subsidiary, some think its the full network… it is not. It too is Wholesale. What this means is tht you wont get 4G or 4GX absolutely everywhere. If I lived in the bush where only Telstra was available, I would go with Boost. I’ve switched to them already.
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It makes sense to me because each time you pre-pay, you are effectively buying a new 30 days.
Personally, I’ve prefer month-to-month plans (no lock-in contract) instead. Unlimited calls and texts for multiple companies average at $10 or less, with data being the only variable factor in relation to price. Some companies (I know Belong is one) are at that price point and also roll over or ‘bank’ data.
I knew someone who got serious data during a promotional period and pays peanuts. He could take advantage of the offer because he was on a month to month and could change providers at the drop of a hat without penalty whenever something better came along.
www.whistleout.com.au is a good comparison website. I don’t use much data so I pay about $15pm for 4 gig + unlimited calls/texts.
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I use Belong Mobile, which is owned by Telstra. Not a prepaid service, but it’s only $10 per month, which gets taken from your bank on the same date every month, plus you get unlimited calls and texts in Australia with 1gb data per month. $25 per month if you want the 10gb version, or $40 per month if you want the 30gb plan. And if you do run out of data, you don’t get charged through the nose for it. You just have your data speed reduced until the next billing day, or until you top up your data for a fee, plus you can gift data to your friends if they’re also with belong.
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Ditto. Belong works for me, because I use most data at home - via a (woeful) NBN…
$10/month is very cheap for a prepaid mobile plan! The only downside with it, is the minor nuisance (when at home) of having to switch from WiFi to 3G/4G network to send or receive a MMS. Otherwise, I am very happy with Belong.
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Now that unlimited Australian fixed/mobile call inclusion is the norm, the difference between a monthly auto-recharge prepaid and a no contract monthly plan is minimal, if anything. However, prepaid can give an advantage on long expiry type plans.
For monthly plans, it is often the norm to get more data than required, where as I would advocate on prepaid to get a little less than required. The longer duration prepaid has the further advantage of averaging out the bumps of data usage.
The comparison sites don’t help the consumer here - they do non-monthly plan comparisons very badly. They equivalence 28 day, 35 day, and real month month plans. Advise if there’s a good one please.
I found very few prepaid mobile data plans available in Tas. The usual abdication of responsibility from Telstra staff is a big turnoff - blaming me for the modem not working because it was 4 years old , yet had been sold to me recently by Telstra.
So try anyone else - no service can be worse that Telstra, and Optus network is growing.
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What’s good for me or someone else may not be good for you. It depends on your budget, and where you live. I have friends on a farm inland on the south coast and their coverage is spotty no matter who they go with, though I think they ended up with Telstra and a yagi antenna.
I was very happy with the Woolworths prepaid service when they were giving rewards card members a 10% discount. Then, they dumped that, and their cheapest plan, whilst increasing data on the next level up ($20/m) I went with that for a while until Boost put up the 365 day plans. For me on an Age Pension, its always going to be about the monthly cost. The 365 day plan I chose works out at $12.50 per month, and for that I get unlimited local and national calls and texts, as well as unlimited international calls (but not texts, those costs come out of real money rather than the unlimited bucket) to 25 countries.
Optus has recently put up a tower nearby, so perhaps it might be worth my while looking at Optus based plans when its time to renew, but so far, I cant complain about my Boost service.
YMMV. Always.
As far as I know… None of them do this.
Maybe that is meaningful and maybe not. As I regularly post I am about 1km from both Telstra and Optus towers in NE Melbourne suburbs. I have an Aldi SIM (Telstra) and amaysim SIM (Optus). Depending on where I am in and about my house and time of day one or the other will often go missing, I need to be in specific rooms to conduct intelligible (not just intelligent) conversations for each, and sometimes the phone will not even ring just send me a missed call message.
That new tower could be your silver bullet for better services, or it could be akin to a sweet having no nourishment. The only way to tell is to either buy a SIM or invite a friendly face who is already on the Optus network and see how it goes over a day, more than once.
Since you are happy with Boost that is all academic, and I am envious of anyone with good, reliable mobile service in their homes.
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Yes and no. Happy with it because its low cost for my use, but if I do have to make or take calls (a rare event, nearly everyone I know has got the message that I prefer texts because of my need to be asleep at various times during the day and texts dont have the immediacy of a call)… if I do have to, sometimes I cannot be heard until I move someplace else in the house.
I’ve lately been considering dropping calls back to 3G
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It’s a common issue in our house too! Also for some of the nearer neighbours. Not all have mobiles! Telstra has a tower within 1km but is next to useless. For some reason (planning rules?), it is low and tree bound. There are other Telstra and Optus towers much further away that will connect.
Technically the communication failure is with the connection from the phone outgoing to the tower. It is not uncommon to receive SMS for a missed call (no ring tone) or ringing calls, only to have the call fail on answering.
The mobile phone brand and model might make all the difference, before settling on any plan, fair or not?
At our home.
For Telstra an early model Samsung dumb 3G blue tick flip phone has outshone all others! The one with the little antenna bump on the top of the housing.
For Optus, despite some iPhones getting great reviews, the larger bodied 8XL works a treat all through the house, while a plain iPhone 8 struggles.
This process of discovery involves bribing all visitors to surrender their mobile model details and making a few test calls while they sip tea inside?
The local tradies tend to use Telstra bricks successfully. Optus has no equivalent!
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I note that most people here seem to be complaining about loss of data or recharge dates getting shorter. My issue is, because I don’t use a phone for anything but phone calls and not often, if I didn’t recharge more money on top of the remaining credit Telstra stole the remaining credit. They had no option to recharge by direct debit so that didn’t happen. I changed to Optus because they do have that facility. I’m still looking for options that don’t have these lurks attached.
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We have 4 or 5 towers of each telecom within 1km. The most usual connected to is 500m away, again with all telecoms. Unfortunately it’s the obstructions - hills & buildings - that get in the road. We can have perfect calls anywhere in the house 70% of the time, then at certain times signals seem to fade away. Which telecom makes little difference. The missed unheard call is a common experience.
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You might try turning off LTE but remaining on 4G. As I understand it, standard 4G calls go back to 3G while data stays at 4G
On my phone the setting is called Enhanced 4G LTE Mode. Oddly I have to disable 2 or 3 times before the new setting sticks. Disabling this while retaining Preferred network type as 4G keeps the phone on 4G.
The only option I have is to turn it off for voice but leave it on for data, so that forces 3G. I’ve also reactivated wifi calling.
I guess some phone dependency. Wifi calling, voice over LTE & RCS messaging are all the advanced LTE services I assume the setting on my phone turns off.
Absolutely, although I’m not sure wifi calling has anything to do with LTE, but then, I dont know much about that in any case. It occurred to me as I was participating here that its entirely probable that it was the action of turning off wifi calling which made my calls unstable. Having it is useful, clearly, in fringe areas. And I am fringed!!
We have a Telstra tower 500 meters from our house and in direct line of sight but often our “NBN” connection through Telstra doesn’t work or is so slow it’s useless. The fibre optic cable to the tower goes through our property 30 metres from our house but we are not allowed to connect to that.
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Connecting to a trunk fibre optic cable can be very difficult, expensive and poses risk to other users of the fibre (greater risk of interruption). In some ways it is like connecting to a high voltage transmission line running at 275kV+ or a very high pressure gas pipeline to get a local domestic supply. While technically possible, not the best cost efrective or reliability solution.
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Slightly more to the point in the most simple sense one can tap into power wires and get electricity. 275kV+ into a home would be exciting as things lit up unless there was a step down transformer added - but still the electricity would flow. Modern life being what it is I’ll add DO NOT EVER THINK ABOUT TRYING IT! 
OTOH comms equipment be it Ethernet cable or fibre requires switches to route traffic; you cannot just tap into it and have it work. Any connection would have to be to/through a switch. While a switch could be added anywhere its scale, cost, power supply, and ongoing maintenance in a cross country trunk would be non-trivial.
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