Tag: mobile data plans

Article

Telstra Go Mobile Sharing Plans: Everything You Need To Know | Gizmodo

From the horse’s mouth

Telstra

Product Page

Go Mobile Data Sharing

Go Mobile Plans And Rates (new tariff charts for mobile services)

My Comments

Most of the telecommunications companies are offering data-sharing plans for their mobile-telecommunications product lines. But what are these data-sharing plans?

These are plans where you can share data allowance and, perhaps, call and messaging value, between multiple handsets on the same account. They are appealing to people who maintain multiple mobile-broadband devices like USB modems, “Mi-Fi” router or tablets / laptops with integrated mobile-broadband modems and allow them to connect to mobile broadband without the need to tether a device to a smartphone that has the main allowance. The plans that share call and messaging value appeal to most couples and families who work on “one household one account” for telecommunications needs and want to have a household-wide mobile telecommunications plan.

Telstra have just launched to the Australian market a new set of data-sharing plans to coincide with their latest mobile-telephony tariff charts that have the “L” (AUD$95/month) and “XL” (AUD$135/month) 24-month subsidised-equipment plans offering 6Gb and 10Gb of data respectively.

Rather than the worrisome extra-data charges that are accounted by the megabyte, Telstra have adopted a new way of accounting and charging for excess data. Here, you now pay AUD$10 per 1Gb for the excess data. They have even allowed customers who are on older plans to switch to this new way of charging for extra data used.

Here, you can purchase and annex to these plans a data-only SIM for use with tablets, “Mi-Fi” devices and USB modems for AUD$5/month or a full-service SIM with unlimited voice and messaging in Australia for another smartphone for AUD$40/month. These SIM packages assume that you have a device that you can bring to these plans and don’t allow you to buy and add in a new device.

Optus is offering a similar service for cheaper but this package is worth it for those of us who place value on a reliable mobile-telecommunications service. This is of importance for those of us who head out to the country and want to he sure of the ability to use the mobile handset or mobile-data device there and are what I would recommend for use with “connected-vehicle” setups.

The plans can be improved on by supplying supplementary devices like USB modems, tablets or Mi-Fi devices on special subsidised-equipment deals for customers who are annexing them to existing data-share mobile plans. This is more so for those of us who want to run a USB mobile-broadband modem with a router that has dual-WAN functionality set up to use Telstra’s mobile network as a failover service.

But with mobile telephony, it is still about you get what you pay for and you will pay a premium for reliable service and increased coverage especially when you are in the bush.

Article

AT&T is the next US carrier to let you roll over unused mobile data | Engadget

AT&T to provide a data rollover package like T-Mobile

From the horse’s mouth

AT&T

Press Release

My Comments

After T-Mobile had done it with their Data Stash plan, one of the other US carriers has opted in to the idea of data plans that allow you to use last month’s unused data allowance. Here, old AT&T had provided the Rollover Data feature to their new and existing Mobile Share Value customers no matter the plan they currently reside on.

But they don’t have the same kind of option that T-Mobile has where you could “harbour” a large quantity of unused data allowance to do something like a huge download or video-stream session. Instead you can only use last month’s surplus after you use up this month’s allowance.

What I see of this is that those who offer bandwidth on an allowance-based model could dabble in the idea of an “unused allowance rollover” scheme. Here, the providers could allow one to harbour a significant amount of unused data or simply limiting this allowance to last month’s surplus.