Our prepaid mobile guide has the caps and plans to look for, and the ones best to avoid.
Remember when....
Once upon a time in a land far, far away...There were no prepaid mobile caps. Shock! Horror! But true. In the late 90's, evening current affair shows had a field day reporting on the trials and tribulations of teens, young adults and even children, who piled up massive debts as a result of there being no 'cap' or limit from which to curb monthly mobile spending.
Eventually, due to community outcry, mounting mobile debts and market demand, the prepaid cap was introduced to great appreciation and prices took off very quickly.
What kind of mobile user are you?
Based on our prepaid mobile research, you're likely either:
- A person who prefers to txt mostly
- A person who prefers to txt and call
- A person who wants calls, txt and web data in one plan.
At around $50 or less, some plans are very web friendly - other's not so much. In fact, some of the plans don't even offer web data options to begin with, which seems incredibly shortsighted in today's era of smartphones.
Once you know how you'll use your plan, you shouldn't find it too hard to figure out the kind of cap to choose.
And if you make a mistake while choosing, you can always start over. Unlocked mobile pre-paid cards can easily be ported to other networks and you get to keep your number. So if you don't like one company one particular month, you can easily switch and go to another whenever you like.
Number/network porting usually only takes a couple of hours. That's why prepaid mobile is so competitive today - we all have the ability to change providers on a whim.
Avoid confusion
Currently, there are some fantastic deals out there; but some telco websites are not particularly well designed. And being difficult to navigate, that can make it awfully confusing in trying to work out which plan comes with what.
Read the call costs carefully. Check and double check again. And if you still have any doubts, always call the vendor's designated customer service line and ask for more clarity about the plans.
Read the fine print
Based on our price search, we found it imperative to check the fine print after we surveyed each deal. Some plans expire in as little as 30 days, while others can be good for anywhere between 60 - 365 days, depending on the plan chosen.
In just about every pre-paid mobile plan we researched, there usually lists an asterisk* next to each plan's details, perhaps in hope that'd you'd bypass this small symbol in a fleeting moment of pre-paid ecstasy.
It's important to read the fine print at the bottom of the webpage to learn about common policies such as 'FairPlay' and 'FairGo', which limit you to a certain number of calls/text per month. By doing so, you will be able to make a better purchasing decision based on that so-called 'amazing' deal, which is just coated in clever marketing language.
The contenders
We looked at the five main mobile telco providers, with one dark horse.
- Three
- Virgin
- Vodafone
- Optus
- Telstra
- Darkhorse: TPG mobile
The price is right
The big winner was deservedly Optus, who offered the only prepaid deal that managed to break the mould between web data and call credits. Their $50 turbo plan is impressive for its sheer size and amount of bonuses, including unlimited access to MySpace and YouTube, two data hungry websites by themselves.
They also include 500MB of data, more than any other deal could manage, plus the requisite cache of credit; some $600 in total to be exact. While they did have the most expensive per minute phone calls of the lot, everything else appears to be A-grade prime pre-paid. Vodafone muscled in for second with their good value Vodafone Live subscriptions, which can be used as part of the credit on plans of $49 and above.
The TPG darkhorse offered a nice combo of call and text credits (including Optus YesTime), but were let down by some dubious fine print clauses which stipulated automate direct debits for low credit balances, testing the wisdom of their pre-paid sales pitch.
Three slotted in not far from Vodafone, with decent data and call credits on the $49 cap. Their call charges seemed decent and data wasn't too far off either, but with the recent merger announced, the viability of either's competitive model is something to watch for now.
Virgin offered no mobile data and to be honest, felt very middle-of-the-road to us. Although to be fair, they are brilliant if all you're friends are on the Virgin network. If that's the case, then your talk and text time is basically free from Virgin to Virgin mobiles.
And not to be unexpected, Telstra lagged at the bottom of our prepaid price watch; hardly known for the quality of their prepaid deals and doing nothing to help with mobile data users.
Three
Best pre-paid mobile plan on offer:
$49 cap
What you get for your money:
- $350 of calls, SMS and Mobile Internet
- Expires in 30 days
Calls costs:
- 40c/min national calls + 35c/flagfall
- 25c/SMS national
- Voicemail: Deposits are free. 40c/30seconds/35c flagfall for retrieval.
Any mobile data?
- Upto 500MB data can be used in 3 zone at 0.7/MB
- Upto $350 of call credit can be used for data.
- $10 of credit to use in Planet 3
Any Bonuses?
- 300 minutes or $240 of free national voice calls to 3 mobiles.
The Lowdown:
Three offered some of the better deals we found. Their combination of web data and mobile calls is very attractive to people who want to check their emails and make plenty of calls.
Obviously, the recent news of the three-Vodafone merger is bound to change these prices in the near future, but we're confident that prices will still stay competitive.
Check out the Three website for more.
Virgin
Best pre-paid mobile plan on offer:
$35: Free to V cap
What you get for your money:
- $135 bonus call/SMS credit
- $35 actual credit (to be used after bonus credit is finished)
- Expires in 30 days
Calls costs:
- 25c/SMS
- 40c/30 seconds with 40c flagfall - national calls
- Voicemail: Free to receive and retrieve
Any Mobile data included?
No
Any Bonuses?
- Free calls to Virgin Mobiles, 24/7
- Free text to Virgin Mobiles, 24/7
The Lowdown
We were surprised by Virgin. Operating on the backbone of the Optus network, their deals are largely a mixture of good and bad. $35 will buy you $170 of credit, but that's not as competitive as the Optus, Vodafone or 3 plans which offer a similar credit amount for around $30 in most cases.
There was no data deal either in this plan, rendering it useless to users who want to dabble in web and calls. But if all you're mates are on Virgin - it's pretty good. Free calls and free text is very hard to beat, but only if you be sure everyone you know uses Virgin prepaid.
Check out the Virgin website for more.
Telstra
Best pre-paid mobile plan on offer:
$40 cap - "I'm always on my mobile - and I've got friends and family on every network."
What you get for your money:
- $40 credit
- Expires in 30 days
Calls costs
- 39c/30 seconds plus 30c flagfall - national calls
- 25c/SMS
- Voicemail retrievals: 30c/30 sec plus 30c flagfall
Any Mobile data included?
No, but they do offer 'Plus Packs at an additional cost:
- Light - BROWSEPLUS5 - $5 for 5MB
- Medium - BROWSEPLUS10 - $10 for 100MB
- Frequent - BROWSEPLUS29 - $29 for 200MB
Any Bonuses?
- 150 free SMS
- 150 free voice minutes to any network
The Lowdown:
We found Telstra quite lacking. While the 150 free voice minutes seems good, it's not good value when your spending $40. The same amount is good for at least $300 credit on most of the other networks we researched. And the data plans seem to be a joke. $29 for 200MB? Are Telstra kidding? Optus or Vodafone have much better deals.
For more information on plans, check the Telstra website.
- More deals and comparisons continued on next page -
Vodafone
Best pre-paid mobile plan on offer:
$49 maxi cap
What you get for your money
$340 call and txt value
Calls costs
- 78c per 60 seconds (charged per 60 second block) + 35c connection fee
- 25c each (up to 160 characters) (and international)
Any mobile data included?
- 1c per kb, excluding Vodafone live! E.g. 130 kb = $1.30 charge
- Min $2.00 credit balance per browsing session, but will only be charged for your actual usage.
Any Bonuses?
- Use up to $10 of your credit on Vodafone live! downloads including music, games, TV and more.
- Optional: Vodafone live TV channel subscription starting at $8 a month
The Lowdown
The Vodafone $49 cap is definitely one of the better value plans on the market, especially if you're after a mix of data, call credits and text options.
It's particularly unbeatable if you decide to put $10 of your cap towards a monthly TV subscription. Our Mobile TV buyers guide has more details on what deals are going, but Vodafone are the only telco to offer cheap, pre-paid TV viewing on your mobile without having to go through the super expensive Next G/mobile Foxtel plans on Telstra.
For more information on their plans, visit the Vodafone website.
Optus
Best pre-paid mobile plan on offer:
$50 Turbo cap.
What you get for your money
$600 credit as:
- $50 Mycredit
- $250 Mybonus
- $300 prepaid credit
Calls costs
- 89c/min plus 35c/flagfall
- 25c/SMS
- Voicemail: Retrieval 20c/30 seconds.
Any mobile data included?
The first 500MB is free, then $1.32 per 60KB + 22c flagfall
Any Bonuses?
- 500MB data deals
- Unlimited free access to MySpace and Youtube.
The Lowdown
Optus are definitely the one to beat for prepaid data and calls. The unlimited access to MySpace and YouTube are very good deal, considering how much data you could churn out of YouTube in an average day.
500MB s just enough for light email and web surfing. And the $600 of call value is very attractive, although it's made up of a number of annoying subcategories such as Mycredit and MySpace and can be confusing to workout at first glance.
The only negative is the incredibly expensive call costs. On the turbo plans, you'll be paying 89c/min plus flagfall fees, which is almost 30 - 40% more than what the other telco's re charging.
The Optus website has more details.
TPG mobile
Best pre-paid mobile plan on offer:
79 cap saver for $39.99
What you get for your money
$550 call and text credit per month
Calls costs
- 40c/30 seconds plus 35c flagfall
- 25.3c/SMS
- Voicemail: Free to receive. Retrievals: 0.29c/30 seconds
- One off $20 setup fee for SIM registration.
Any mobile data included:
- Yes. WAP over GPRS and Wireless Internet.
- 5c/10kb or $5/MB for data.
Bonuses?
Yes. Yes time bonus: Free calls to any TPG, Soul or Optus GSM mobile with 'yes' TimeTM between 8pm to midnight, every day, for the first 20 minutes of each call.
The Lowdown
TPG, using the Optus network wasn't quite as bad as we first expected. While we were slightly put off by the one-off SIM fee (the only such fee we could find in the deals we checked), we were encouraged to see that $40 bought you $550 of credit - a princely sum. Data usage isn't cheap at $5/MB and it's unclear how they calculate the credit. Their website wasn't much help in figuring this out.
TPG also want you're balance to always stay above $5 and will automatically debit you back to $20 if this occurs. That makes us wonder how this service can actually be called true pre-paid.
The value of Yes time is good: Free calls from 8pm to midnight. However, there is no 3G support and for that reason, as 3G becomes standard, you might want to just stick with Optus for much better and easier to understand deals.
For more info on plans, check out the TPG website.