Optus "streamlines" prepaid with new monthly and daily plans
The mobile provider unveils new daily prepaid plans starting from a dollar a day, with six months credit expiry.
The Prepaid Daily plan offers 30 mins of calls, unlimited SMS and 40MB of data for AU$1. Go over your call and data limited and Optus will "auto bump" the plan to AU$1.50 with unlimited calls and 80MB of data. From there, you'll be continually bumped by fifty cents for 50MB to a max of AU$5 per day and a total of 430MB.
Prepaid Daily Plus is AU$2 a day for unlimited calls and SMS, plus 500MB of data, with a single auto bump at the end of the data limit, making it AU$4 a day for 1GB.
The minimum recharge on both is AU$10 and there's a six month expiry on any credit. Beyond the automatic data upgrades, additional data (with a daily expiry) can be bought for AU$2 for 500MB.
On the monthly prepaid side, the plans have been changed to more closely resemble Optus' postpaid offering, with AU$30, AU$45 and AU$60 options available. Data limits for these are 1GB, 2GB and 5GB respectively. The AU$30 plan has 350 minutes of calls with unlimited SMS, while the others have unlimited calls and messages across the board.
Ben White, VP of Mobile Marketing at Optus, told CNET that the new daily plans were aimed at "customers who are very value conscious or may only have sporadic usage when it comes to their smartphones". White suggested that the Daily Plus in particular was good for "data savvy people with a budget".
All the plans also feature low rate international calling to selected countries with no flagfall. These include China and Hong Kong at AU$0.03 a minute and the USA at AU$0.04.
The plans will become available on 11 August, although White says that the existing prepaid plans will remain in market for at least another three months and customers can remain on their current plans indefinitely if they chose.