It appears that Optus is about to unveil its version of mobile data sharing across SIMs, while also upping the amount of data it offers its customers.
A report in The Australian overnight suggests that Optus will today announce plans that allow customers to share mobile data allowances across multiple devices as a standard part of their plan.
If accurate — and it’s not clear if The Australian’s truly broken the story ahead of this morning’s launch, or if it was handed to them as a PR exclusive — then Optus won’t be the first to market with plans that include data sharing. It follows Telstra, who announced plans with that option late last year. The difference here is that Optus is reportedly planning on making this a standard matter, whereas Telstra charges an additional fee if you want to share data.
What stands out more from my perspective within the report is the suggestion that Optus will also bump up the data allowances on its existing plans in an effort to entice consumers. Again, if accurate, that’s a very welcome step indeed, because the past few years have seen data allowances generally slip downwards rather than up.
Vodafone has made some strides in offering affordable data plans, but it’s still somewhat stuck with the stigma of the whole “Vodafail” debacle in the eyes of many consumers. Anything that puts pressure across the market as a whole to offer more data, rather than less, has to be a good thing.
We’ll know more when Optus makes its formal announcement at 9:30am this morning, and I’ll update once more details emerge.
Update:
Optus does have a form of additional payment to be made, with a $5 single setup cost per additional device on a shared plan. Any plan can add 1GB of data as needed for $10, and you’ll apparently automatically be charged that $10 for each additional gigabyte of data used over a calendar month.
Here’s the rundown of the new plans, which encompass contract (“My Plan Plus”) and Sim only (“My Plan Plus SIM only”). They’ll be available to buy from the 10th of June. Optus has stated that existing customers will also be able to transfer to these new plans, although you’d need to get additional data SIMs from an Optus store if you planned on sharing on new devices.
According to Optus, we’ll have to “stay tuned” on word regarding prepaid customers wanting this kind of service — which is the polite way of saying that it’s not available for prepaid customers.
[table]
“Optus MyPlan”,,,,
“Contract”,”Included Minutes”,”Included SMS/MMS”,”Included Data”,”Contract/Minimum Cost”
$35.00,300,”Unlimited”,”500MB”,”24 months/$840″
$50.00,600,”Unlimited”,”1GB”,”24 months/$1200″
$60.00,”Unlimited”,”Unlimited”,”2GB”,”24 months/$1920″
$80.00,”Unlimited”,”Unlimited”,”3GB”,”24 months/$2440″
$100.00,”Unlimited”,”Unlimited”,”5GB”,”24 months/$2440″
,,,,
“Sim Only”,,,,
$30.00,300,”Unlimited”,”500MB”,”Month to month”
$45.00,”Unlimited”,”Unlimited”,”2GB”,”Month to month”
$60.00,”Unlimited”,”Unlimited”,”5GB”,”Month to month”
[/table]
Source: The Australian (paywalled)