Amaysim joins the world of high-speed 4G LTE

Amaysim has always prided itself on offering value for money when it came to mobile communications, but it was stuck in the world of 3G. Not so anymore, as Amaysim joins the modern world with 4G starting this week.

When it comes to mobile telcos, Australians have a fair amount of choice. There’s the typical big names like Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, and Virgin, and then there are the smaller players making up the rest of the market.

Amaysim has been one of those players since its launch in late 2010, providing value for people who were after a plan but not necessarily the hardware to match, and who might not want the heavy speeds associated with a super-fast network.

This week, however, at least one of those issues has gone away, because while Amaysim still doesn’t deal in hardware and is strictly a bring-your-own (BYO) sort of provider, it now has lots of high speed to work with, and if you have a 4G phone, you’ll be very happy.

That’s because Amaysim has joined the world of 4G this week, switching on its Optus 4G access complete with support for 700MHz technology which provides better mobile connectivity inside buildings and elevators, provided you have a 700MHz compatible phone, though there are a few of those out there, with many circulating since the middle of last year.

“A lot of telcos were tripping over themselves in the rush to bring 4G plans to market since the technology hit Aussie networks,” said Julian Ogrin, CEO of Amaysim.

We always said we’d move to 4G when networks were sufficiently rolled out and we could offer plans that made sense for the half of all Aussie mobile users expected to be on 4G services by June this year,” he said, adding that “we are now in that position.”

And with that, Amaysim is working on 4G, provided you have a 4G LTE phone already. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck on 3G for the moment, until you update to a newer device, of which Amaysim won’t sell to you since it doesn’t deal in hardware. That said, provided a 4G phone is bought unlocked, it will work on the Amaysim network which is powered by Optus 4G.

For this 4G launch, Amaysim sends word that it has three main unlimited phone and text plans, each with their own download amount, with 1.5GB fetching a price of $29.90 per month, 4GB grabbing $44.90 per month, and 6GB of downloads (on top of the unlimited phone and text) coming in at $54.90 per month.

Amaysim’s flexible and pay-as-you-go plans will also support 4G, but without the free data, phone calls, and texts, and with starting prices of $19.90 per month or $5 starting credit respectively.

“4G isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, so we closely watched the market, followed data use trends, listened to customer feedback and then pulled together a range of plans worth waiting for,” said Ogrin.

“Unlike other players in the market, we don’t want to tell customers what they need or put out plans that are either price-inflated or have questionable sustainability. Instead we’re giving people the power to choose what they want within a range of realistic budgets along with the option of moving between plans from one month to the next.”

Amaysim’s 4G plans go into effect from today (March 24), and include kilobyte rounding, with each megabyte coming in at 7.2 cents if you go over on a plan, with 1GB data packs also available for $9.90 and 30 day expiration periods, meaning if you’re out of downloads and you have four days left on your month but you grab a 1GB pack, it will continue to work (if you have downloads left) into the next month.

SIM cards can be found across Australia from Amaysim’s website, as well as retail outlets including Coles, Harvey Norman, Dick Smith, Big W, and more.