Thursday, July 18, 2019

Capped Speed Mobile Broadband Data Plans

Telstra recently simplified its mobile phone plans. Along with this were data plans, from 5 to 100 GBytes per month. What got my attention was that after the data limit is reached, the service keeps working, with no extra charges, but with the speed capped at 1.5 Mbps.

The Telstra speed cap is much higher than for the Belong service I had been using, of 64Kbps. As I am using the service for email and web browsing, not watching moves, 1.5 Mbps should be sufficient. So I signed up for the minimum 5 GBytes for $15 per month.

I found Telstra's website very confusing. So I went into a Telstra store and a very helpful sales person provided a new SIM and signed me up. I walked out with a working service. I am using this with a tiny Wingle (Wifi equipped USB modem dongle). For those wanting a low fuss, low speed broadband, this looks a good option.

Some other mobile data providers are also offering a 1.5Mbps cap. Belong is owned by Telstra and uses the Telstra network. It will be interesting to see if they switch to a 1.5 Mbps cap.

1 comment:

Tom Worthington said...

Just ran an Open Speed Test on my Telstra 4G wireless modem: Download: 12 45 Mbps, Upload: 2.50 Mbps, Ping: 78.0 ms, Jitter: 6 ms. This is when not throttled.