Data allowances on mobile phone plans and mobile are much more generous than they used to be, but the volume on offer doesn’t tell the whole story. Depending on exactly how your mobile provider counts data can make a huge difference to how quickly you burn through it. Planhacker rounds up the current policies for every mobile provider in Australia.
Picture: Getty Images/Frederick M Brown
When you sign up for a mobile plan, it all seems very simple. You get allocated 1GB, 2GB, or however much your plan offers, and that’s what you get to use, right?
Not quite. The sneaky trick that underlies most mobile data provider plans is the charging unit. That’s the minimum rate at which each data session is counted, no matter how much data you actually use. So if your provider counts in per-MB increments, every session you start, uses at least 1MB, every time. Check something three times, and you’ve “used” 3MB, even if you actual data throughput was only, say, 200KB in total. It’s a trap that in the past we’ve seen hit users as per-MB or even per-10MB units were common.
What’s the picture like in 2015, though? Here’s a rundown of the major telcos and their MVNOs, as per their web site policies. If you spot an MVNO we’ve missed, or an error, feel free to pipe up below.
| Provider | Network | Plan type | Data counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALDI | Telstra 3G | Prepaid | per 25KB |
| Amaysim | Optus 4G | Prepaid | per KB |
| Boost | Telstra 3G | Prepaid | per KB |
| Dodo | Optus 4G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per KB |
| Exetel | Optus 4G | Prepaid | per KB |
| iiNet | Optus 4G | Postpaid | per KB |
| Jeenee | Optus 4G | Prepaid | per KB |
| Just | Vodafone 3G | Prepaid | per 5s |
| Lebara | Vodafone 3G | Prepaid | per KB |
| Optus | Optus 4G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per KB |
| Telechoice | Telstra 3G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per 10KB |
| Telstra | Telstra 4G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per KB |
| TPG | Optus 4G | Prepaid | per KB |
| Vaya | Optus 3G | Postpaid | per KB |
| Virgin Mobile | Optus 4G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per KB |
| Vodafone | Vodafone 4G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per KB |
| Woolworths Connect | Telstra 3G | Prepaid | per 25KB |
| Yatango | Optus 4G | Postpaid/Prepaid | per KB |
The good news, for 2015 at least, is that the vast majority of providers have switched to simple per-KB charging, which means you’re much less likely to be overcharged for your data usage on an ongoing basis. There are a few weird outliers still present, however.
Aldi, Woolworths and Telechoice are all Telstra wholesale MVNOs, and all use a slightly higher base that could impact your usage depending on when your service registers a session ending event. Just Mobile’s charging, where you pay per 5 seconds of data connection is just plain wacky, and probably best avoided because if you’ve got background services pinging for data, you could rack up some serious charges quite quickly.
Lifehacker’s Planhacker column rounds up the best communication deals.
Comments
6 responses to “Planhacker: How Does Your Mobile Provider Count Data?”
amaysim – still use 5c/mb for 3G plans (existing customers only really)
Vaya mobile service is on Optus 4G network.
might be worth adding if uploads are counted
Uploads are always counted as part of the total on mobile plans.
What would be really interesting to find out are the peering interconnects each provider has.
For example iiNet can provide Netflix data within its “freezone” because it literally has a Netflix box in one of its co-lo facilities with a 10gbps loop.
So what is in VHA’s intranet. What does Telstra provide within its freezone and so on.
I’ve never seen a complete list nor do they advertise it when you go to sign up so i’d be interested if someone wrote an article about it.
https://support.telstra.com.au/t5/Manage/BigPond-unmetered-sites/ta-p/398487
Hello Mobile is a little expensive at $0.05 per Mb, measure in $0.01 increments. So 10kb of data can cost $0.01, which can happen hourly as Apple iMessage pings the server.
Lebara only meters per kb on the first free 1MB per day… subsequent to that its all charged in MB increments per session.