Telstra Just Changed All Of Its Phone Plans [Updated]

We’ve known for a while now that Telstra planned on revamping its plans by the end of June, and now we know what the big reveal is.

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This post was originally published June 25 at 9:00am.

Big T just completely changed how its plans work. It is now moving exclusively to month-to-month plans with no lock in contracts. And they will be available for handset-based plans, as well as when you BYO Phone.

This is what they look like:

That’s it. No more leasing plans, no more $199 Unlimited data plan and a base line of 15GB a month instead of 3GB.

Telstra was hinting at simplifying its offering, and going from roughly 1,800 plans down to 20 across personal and business certainly has done that.

The plans also come with standard national calls and texts and no excess data charges. However, if you go over your cap your speed will reduce to 1.5Mbps.

If you want to avoid getting shaped you can choose to go up to the next data tier – the plans are flexible enough to allow you to change your mind to go up and down tiers once a month.

However, if you are on top-tier 150GB per month plan and go over your data limit there is no option to add-on more data, you can only get throttled to the aforementioned 1.5Mbps.

If you choose to add a phone to the plan the repayments will be added to the plan and can be paid off over 24 or 36 months. The cost of that will depend upon which phone you choose, but it should be really easy to see how much it will cost per month now with the new standardised plans.

If you want to leave before that time you will need to pay out the rest of the cost of the phone.

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All of these deals comes with free access to 5G during the trial period, which runs until June 30 2020. Thereafter it will be an optional add on for the Small and Medium plans, costing an extra $15 a month. It will remain free for customers on Large and Extra Large plans.

You will also need a 5G compatible device for this and it will only work in 5G activated areas.

Our own tests of 5G across multiple devices have been mixed so far. They certainly haven’t been anywhere near the 1.2Gbps+ speeds that have been promised or achieved in the controlled environment of Telstra’s Sydney office. Coverage has also been hard to find and inconsistent.

To be fair, we’re only a few weeks into the roll out period and Telstra has said that more areas will open up by June 30.

That being said, let’s hope that coverage will improve dramatically over the next year so the trial period will be worth it. It would be a shame if Telstra 5G started becoming consistently stable and commonplace once people had to pay for it.

Telstra’s new month to month phone plans are available now.

It’s worth noting that Telstra will honour all current contracts and that there will still be Telstra pre-paid plans available. If you would like to move over to one of the new plans before your current contract period is up we recommend getting in touch with Telstra.

Update 12:35pm:

Telstra has confirmed that roaming will now be available exclusively through its $10 day pass in select countries.

As for international calls and texts, customers will be able to add on an international package for $10 a month which will work with the following countries:

Canada, China, Germany, Guam, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Puerto Rico, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, U.S Virgin Islands, USA, UK.

For all other countries, or without the add-on package, customers will be charged pay-as-you-go fees.