Mobile Phones and 3G in Australia – “Yes” to Optus

Yes 3G lets you know your location

If you’re traveling anywhere outside your domestic mobile phone provider coverage it’s gonna be expensive.  As I always do when I travel to another country, I came to Australia with the intentions on getting a SIM card from a local provider for my phone and buying pre-paid calling plan.  In Australia, there are four major players when it comes to 3G mobile networks: Vodaphone, Next G (Telstra), 3 (Hutchison), and Yes Optus.  By all accounts, they are more advanced than the US so I was excited to try one of them out.  Which one to go with could have taken me forever to figure out. Luckily, I got the scoop from a fellow techie from Sydney while on the plane flight over.  He recommended going with Optus and getting a “Turbo Cap” pre-paid mobile plan to satisfy my voice and data needs.

Without hesitation (or any other recommendations) I simply went to the nearest Optus store (official and authorized resellers are everywhere) and bought their biggest Turbo Cap $100 plan thinking I’ll need it for my nearly 20 days here. After all, with AT&T I pay about $100 (after taxes) for 900 minutes of voice and unlimited data.  For the Turbo Cap plan, $100 AUD gets you about $1500 in value.  The breakdown of this value is a bit confusing as it consists of MyCredit, MyBonus, Pre-Paid Money, and MyData.  For the most part, the former two credits is what’s important which combine for $900 in credit for calls, texts, and data.  Pre-Paid money ($600 value) is probably something I’ll never use as it’s only for calling others with Optus pre-paid plans.  MyData is up to 1GB. It’s what you do with your phone is what will determine how long this will last.  There is a cost for everything – voice calls, texts, MMS, internet, and even voicemail retrieval. If my math is right, a two minute Turbo Cap call will cost $2.13 AU (which includes the flagfall charge). Seems expensive, but keeping in mind I have $900 of credit (that I’ll use), that’s roughly 422 calls or 844 minutes.  The effect per minute rate is between 9c-11c AU (.05-.07 US).  Calling home is not much more expensive.  I spoke to my friend Dan back home for about 20 minutes and it only cost a few cents more per minute.

So it’s obvious now I will come no where close to using all my credit with calls but obviously, I got this plan for data.  The data rate is $1.32 per 60kb + .22 flagfall. So if I were to use all my $900 credit on data, it roughly calculates out to 1GB. Ten cents per MB or .01 per 100kb is not bad considering AT&T would charge you 300x’s that at .03 US per KB while roaming!

Here’s the great thing about Optus 3g – they’re running on a network that can deliver data up to 7 megabits per second. Back home AT&T is running on a similar network but they limit you to a max of 1.4mbps.  So killer right?  I can stream Qik with hardly any delays less drain on my phone’s battery right?  Yes in theory, no in my case. The caveat to using Australia’s high speed 3G/HSPA networks however, is having a phone compatible with their 2100 Mhz HSPA band.  US 3G is on 1900 Mhz.  Unfortunately my Nokia N95-3 (north american) phone cannot take advantage of this and I’m relagated to pre-3g speeds. (Such is the reason I haven’t posted more often nor are my Qiks are in realtime) This is just another reason why I can’t wait to get the N97 as it will be compatible with both 3g bands.

With Optus pre-paid plans, you get 30 days to use your credits until they expire. (My understanding is that only the MyCredit balance expires).  It’s been almost a week and for obvious reasons I’m not even close to being on pace to using all my pre-paid credits.  I also can’t use my data when I travel to New Zealand so maybe a reason to use Vodafone.  Either way, I definitely could have gone with a much lessor plan.  Oh well, there still a lot to like about Optus.

Here are ten things about Optus Turbo Cap that I’ve found to be great and have me wondering why US providers such so bad…

1. Everytime you recharge with $30 when you enter your code online you win an instant reward (i.e extra $’s for text, voice, data)
2. If you recharge your minutes before your expiration, unused credit will rollover.
3. You can share your credit with friends via text or Internet.  Anyone want my left over credit when I leave?
4. Free calls to up to 5 specified Optus GSM mobile or landline numbers
5. Watch over 20 TV channels on your phone
6. If you run out of credit and need to make an urgent call, text “IOU” to 468 and Optus will lend you $3 credit. They’ll deduct the $3 on your next pre-paid balance.
7. Multiple ways to recharge your credit (online, text, phone, ATM, instore)
8. With the Optus SIM card pack (cost $4 AUD) they give you $30 call credit
9. Upon activation, Optus sends a text with a link that when clicked automatically configures your phone (at least my Nokia N95) with the right network settings (voice, SMS, MMS, and internet).
10. When you activate your SIM card online you’ll never have so many choices for titles – not just the standard “Mr” or “Mrs”, but “Sir”, “Reverend”, “Captain”, and my favorite, “The”. I’m not exactly sure how you earn the later title but I thought it sounded good knowing there are a ton of people with the same name as me.

Admittedly, I haven’t had a chance to explore pre-paid plans from 3, Vodafone, Telstra personally other than looking at their brochures.  But it seems Optus does have the best thing going.