David Flynn04 May 2009, 9:57 PM
Vodafone has joined its rivals in offering 3G wireless broadband to prepaid customers. So which telco offers the best value for your ‘pay as you go’ mobile broadband buck?
In both the technological and financial senses, pay-as-you-go wireless broadband means ‘no strings attached’.
Instead of inking a prohibitive contract with a fixed monthly spend and a use-it-or-lose-it data allocation, pre-paid mobile broadband tailors itself to your own budget and usage habits.
Of course, prepaid’s casual rates are more expensive than the equivalent data deal once you’re locked into a contract. And given how affordable 3G wireless broadband can become you could even be better off on an entry-level contract plan.
Take Vodafone’s newly-released plans for example. You’re charged $29 for 1GB of data on top of $149 for the Starter Pack which includes the USB modem and a nominal 500MB to get you going.
If you sign up for a 24 month contract you can get 1GB of data each month for $25 ($20 for the data and $5 for the modem). That’s slightly cheaper on a per-month basis and you don’t have to shell out $149 up front for the modem. It all depends on how often you expect to need wireless broadband.
Each telco’s prepaid scheme kicks off with a Starter Pack containing a USB modem and a chunk of data to get you up and running. In most cases additional data top-ups or recharges expire after 30 days unless you recharge the account, although some telcos allow data to be rolled over from one month to the next.
Vodafone
Vodafone’s Starter Pack includes one of its new dual-band USB ‘Internet stick’ modems which taps into both the 2100MHz and 900MHz 3G networks, plus a generous 500MB of data for $149. If you connect before June 30 this is boosted to a whopping 2GB of data as a launch promotion.
Recharge packs give you 500MB for $19, 1GB for $29 and 3GB for $39; if you recharge your account online with a credit card you get an extra 10% of data added to your tally.
Unused data is forfeited if you don’t recharge your account within 30 days, although Vodafone allows up to 5GB to be rolled over into the next month. Usage is calculated in 1MB increments.
Telstra
$149 gets you Telstra’s Pre-Paid Wireless Broadband Starter Pack, comprising a USB modem plus $10 credit that’s good for a mere 75MB.
Telstra offers a wide range of recharge packs: $20 for 150MB, $30 for 225MB, $40 for 300MB, $50 for 625MB, $60 for 750MB, $80 for 3.5GB and $100 for 6GB. Some of those data allowances are odd because Telstra bases them on the data rate per MB, which varies from 13.3c on the cheaper plans to 1.65c at the top end of the scale.
Unused credit expires after 30 days. Recharging within the 30 day period gives you an extra month to chew through your tally, but there’s a catch: the per MB data rate is determined by your most recent recharge amount.
For example, let’s say you’re sitting on 2GB of leftovers from a 3.5GB top-up and the 30 day mark is fast approaching. If you buy the $20 140MB plan in an effort to hang onto those extra 2GB for a little longer, Telstra will change the data rate from 2.25c per MB – the rack rate for the $80 3.5GB plan – to the 13.3c/MB of the cheaper plan. So your 2GB of data suddenly becomes a mere 330MB.
Optus
Optus prepaid begins with the same shtick as the rest – $149 for the Pre-Paid Bundled Starter Pack gets you your dual-band USB modem plus 200MB with the usual 30-day expiry period. There are five top-up or ‘voucher’ plans: $30 for 1GB, $40 for 2GB, $50 for 3GB, $70 for 4GB and $100 for 6GB.
The first three plans have a 30 day expiry on the data allocation, while the $70/4GB and $100/6GB plans last for 60 days. Buying your recharge voucher online using a credit card gets you an extra 15% of data for each plan.
But the devil is in the detail. Optus rings up a minimum 10MB of data every time you connect. Every session counts as at least 10MB, even if you only download a few emails and click through a few Web sites.
Optus has granted one concession, which is that the first 30MB of usage each day is tallied to a total of 10MB. But once you go past 30MB in any given day, every subsequent session has an effective 10MB ‘flag-fall’.
3
The mandatory starter kit costs $129, for which you get a USB modem and a meagre 50MB-100MB of data depending on how you activate your account (over the phone for 50MB or online for 100MB). Casual recharge packs share the same aggressive pricing as their contract siblings – $15 for 500MB, $29 for 2GB and $49 for 4GB, each with a 30-day limit but a rollover to 15GB.
However, if you pony up $149 you’ll get 12GB of data that remains available for a full year. This is a pretty compelling deal if your usage is intensive yet follows an ‘on-again, off-again’ pattern over a period of many months.
The usual caveat as to 3’s coverage applies: roaming off the telco’s limited-coverage 3G network onto Telstra’s network will cost you extra.
And because the modem supplied with the pre-paid starter kit isn’t one of 3’s Next G-compatible ‘Mega 3G’ modems you’ll be dumped onto the GSM network and slugged $1.65/MB for a connection speed that’s almost unusable. Each of the 3 pre-paid plans comes with a small monthly roaming allowance ranging from 2MB to 12MB, but you’re better off just forgetting about GSM roaming and sticking with 3G.
The bottom line?
Vodafone offers the best all-up deal when you consider the higher data
allocation in its Starter Pack, the good recharge rates and the greatly
extended coverage of the carrier’s dual-band network.
Three generally has the cheapest on-going recharge rates and certainly a unique deal in its $149/12GB pack with a one year use-by date, but you’d better plan never to set foot outside the telco’s limited 3G coverage.
The only reason you’d choose Telstra would be for the extensive coverage of its Next G network – the prices are outrageous and the recharge terms for carry-over data means you just can’t win.
Optus matches expensive plans with that gulp-inducing 10MB minimum data flagfall, so use that one at your own risk.