Optus customers travelling to Asia can now purchase unlimited data packs for their mobile devices with prices starting at $27.
Described as a "first-of-its-kind offer for Australians", the new Bridge DataRoam Unlimited packs will grant Optus customers unlimited data access while travelling abroad.
Currently, the packs can be used in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea,Taiwan and Thailand, which are all part of the Bridge DataRoam consortium. Other destinations, including Macau and India, will be added "in the coming months".
The Bridge DataRoam Unlimited packs come in two flavours: a three day pack for $27 and a five day pack for $40. Once the time limit has expired, customers will be charged data roaming rates of 15 cents per kilobyte (around $15 per MB).
A choice of three or five day packs are offered.
Optus customers will need to manually select the relevant network when they arrive at the overseas destination to ensure that they do not roam on non-Bridge Alliance networks, Optus explained. You can find a list of countries and their corresponding networks here.
Last year, Optus came under heavy fire for being the most expensive mobile network for data roaming, with basic data roaming costing $20 per megabyte worldwide. If nothing else, the new Bridge DataRoam Unlimited data packs should help to minimise bill shock.
Telstra's data roaming packs currently start at $29 for 10MB of data. On the plus side, the packs work in a lot more countries, including the US and UK, and last for a full 30 days. Vodafone offers a similar range of data roaming packs to Telstra, with prices starting at $20 for 10MB of data.
See also:
Roaming for a better deal
Good telco customer service: seeing will be believing
