The Telstra T22 strategy announced one year ago has seen the number of post-paid plans reduce from 1800 to 20 – with of course now numerous options!
As of 25 June, the Telstra T22 strategy has new consumer and small business plans:
- No lock-in ‘term’ plans
- Change plan once a month
- No excess data charges in Australia**
- 24-and-36-month device payment options***
- Personalise a plan through add-ons, e.g. international calls/text $10/mth or roaming for $10/day etc
It is a kind of shopping basket approach. Buy the basket and fill it with options.
The emphasis is on the word ‘new’ meaning ‘existing’ customers of the maddening mire of 1800, often wildly inconsistent plans will need to contact Telstra at the end of their current plan to see what deal you can do.
Telstra CEO Andy Penn said,
“Last year, when we announced our T22 strategy, we set out to eliminate customer pain points and increase the simplicity, transparency and satisfaction customers experience with our products. As part of this, we promised to simplify our plans from 1,800 to 20 and remove domestic excess data charges; and we have achieved that. We have also given our customers a choice to add entertainment, accessories and devices to their plans with no upfront charges and introduced our Telstra Plus loyalty program to reward our customers.”
GadgetGuy’s take – Telstra T22 – one small step for mankind
Telstra’s move to clean up the unholy mess that was its post-paid pricing is welcome. At this stage, GadgetGuy does not have the bandwidth to analyse entirely what this means. And Telstra has not mentioned how this affects existing customers – many of whom simply let plans slide from year to year without questioning if there could be better value.
- Mobile, voice and data post-paid plans – $40*/2GB, $50*/15GB, $60/60GB, $100/150GB and includes standard calls and texts.
- Data only post-paid plans (no voice or text) are $15*/5GB, $25*/10GB, $50/50GB and $75/100GB.
- Then you add a handset – BYO or buy on a plan
But wait there is still the fine print
* 5G access costs an extra $15 after June 2020.
** ‘No excess data charges’ do not mean at your existing 4/5G speed. Like the ‘Peace of Mind’ data it replaces, it caps speeds at 1.5Mbps – ‘snails’ pace good for email only. Gone is the discretionary $10 per GB add on and the so-called $199 unlimited plan (which had a 150GB cap anyway). You can bump up your plan to the next level for a month (provided you remember to bump it down the next month).
*** If you buy a handset from Telstra over 24/36 months and switch from Telstra to another provider in that time you have to pay the remaining handset cost (you own it – leasing plans seem to have disappeared so that may affect upgrade handset plans). This ends the cross-subsidy of handset costs from mobile data plans – the price is the price. Perhaps that will stop people over committing to expensive handsets they don’t need or cannot afford.
Family data sharing seems to have disappeared but is available for business plans on the one account.
It is a good start and hopefully will reduce bill shock. I suspect the plan reduction from 1800 to 20 is a bit of a euphemism for 20 plans and 1778 options.
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