SYDNEY: Optus has unveiled a new assault on Telstra’s mobile subscriber base with new plans that will for the first time allow families to share data quotas by combining their household’s mobile phone plans on one bill.
The No. 2 telco has launched the plans to target as many as one million households that it thinks will jump at the offer.
By pooling all of a household’s mobile bills together, parents — who do not typically use as much data as their children — will be able to share their unused quotas with their data-hungry children.
“All families have different data needs, with some people in the house using more than others. Now customers can combine all the mobile plans in their home on the same bill and make the most of their data,” said Optus’s marketing and product boss Vicki Brady.
“Currently around 68 per cent of our My Plan customers are using less than 50 per cent of their monthly data inclusions. We know that 18-20 year olds use 2.7 times more data than those over 45 years old.”
The new postpaid plans will also come with unlimited voice calls and text messages.
There will be no ongoing costs to share data on the plans which will allow customers to combine as many new My Plan Plus or SIM-only plans as they like.
Download caps on all but Optus’s cheapest plans will also be increased. A standard $60 plan over 24 months will now come with 3GB of data, while a $100 a month plan will now come with 10GB.
Optus’s new plans come just a week after Telstra (TLS) introduced sweeping changes to its mobile offers in a bid to eliminate ‘bill shock” for millions of its mobile customers.
This counter-move by Optus will put the No. 2 back on the front foot and help it gnaw at Telstra’s dominance of the mobile sector.
The telco giant has more than 16 million subscribers compared with the 9.4 million at Optus and 5.3 million at Vodafone Hutchison Australia.
