Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking Archaic excess data charges have long been a pain point for Australian consumers, particularly in a world where our unreliable national broadband network means many of us still lean on mobile data tethering to get the job done. Sometimes, a mobile hotspot (or pocket WiFi) is your only hope when it comes to streaming the latest episode of a Disney Plus TV show. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget you’re still connected when the PlayStation 5 decides to download the latest Call of Duty update. With plans that still charge excess fees, letting your hotspot do the heavy lifting is a recipe for disaster. With some game updates using upwards of 25GB of data, you could easily rack up a $250 bill all for a few cheeky rounds of Apex Legends. That’s where speed-capped endless data plans come in. Optus has opted for the term ‘endless’ when discussing its 1.5Mbps speed-caps, Telstra has started avoiding any and all allusions to ‘unlimited’ altogether for its 1.5Mbps, and Vodafone has decided to live on the edge with the term ‘infinite’ data. Here’s a quick look at the capped speeds you can expect with each provider. While they might have had it coming, the ACCC put Optus, Vodafone and Telstra on notice back in 2018 for their use of ‘unlimited’ in reference to plans that had a speed cap. The ACCC found the marketing language around unlimited to be misleading when there were in fact limits placed on download speeds once the allotted data amount had been exceeded. Fair call. Before we get stuck into each provider, here’s a glance at the most popular SIM plans with endless or unlimited data. Here’s more information on what each mobile provider with endless data offers. Vodafone is also the only provider currently offering ‘unlimited’ data plans with capped mobile speeds on prepaid, which it caps at 1.5Mbps across the board. Vodafone’s guide to capped download speeds suggests that customers it deems ‘heavy data’ users may experience even slower capped speeds. That offer is available exclusively on its BYO plans. Telstra prepaid customers who exceed their data will be unable to access mobile data unless they’ve set up an auto-recharge. Otherwise, you’ll have to manually add extra data via the Telstra app. Telstra’s CIS (Critical Information Summary) also suggests that heavy data users, which it defines as users in the top 1 per cent of data users, may experience speeds slower than 1.5Mbps. Optus postpaid plans range from $39 per month, which gives you 10GB of max speed data, to $65 per month, which gives you a whopping 500GB of data every month. Endless data is also an option through Optus plans. If you’d prefer to go back to the old method of excess data usage, you can do so once per month via the My Optus app.
