Aussies slugged with $259 million in excess mobile data fees, up 78 per cent from last year

NEW survey data shows a surprising trend in our use of mobile data and it’s costing us more money than ever.

AUSTRALIAN mobile users don’t have access to enough data — and it’s hurting their hip pocket.

New data from comparison website finder.com.au shows there has been a big jump in how much Aussies were being slugged with for going over their monthly mobile data allowance.

The company surveyed more than 2000 consumers and estimates that Australians coughed up about $259 million in excess mobile data fees in the last year.

According to the website’s data, that is $113 million more than the previous year, which amounts to a 78 per cent increase.

Nearly one in five (19.6 per cent) adults regularly exceeded their data allowance, up from 13.4 per cent in 2016 and 5.6 per cent in 2015, the company said.

After years of bill shock horror stories from customers who unwittingly ran up their data usage, the major mobile service providers have mostly moved to an industry standard of charging $10 for each extra gigabyte (GB) of data allocated to customers. Typically customers could expect to receive a text message from their carrier notifying them of the top up.

But it certainly pays to read the fine print of your contract, said finder.com.au’s tech expert Alex Kidman.

“Some telcos are now charging $12 or even $13 per extra gigabyte which may not seem like a big deal, but if you’re regularly going over your allowance, that could be an extra few hundred dollars a year,” he said.

“Our report shows Aussies are increasingly underestimating how much data they need, and they’re paying for it. But what many don’t realise is choosing a higher limit is typically a lot cheaper than paying excess data charges.”

Were you one of the Australians to go over your data cap recently?

WHEN WILL WE GET UNLIMITED DATA PLANS?

Unlike the US, there are no Australian telcos that offer unlimited data packages for mobile customers but some industry insiders believe it’s just a matter of time until they do.

In February, Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton said he believed Aussies would be able to access unlimited mobile data before the year was out — however, that certainly doesn’t look like coming to pass in the next few months.

The co-founder of finder.com.au, Fred Schebesta, also thinks we will soon have access to unlimited mobile data but believes it will take some time due to factors such as the large geography of Australia and our small population density.

Speaking to news.com.au in August on the issue of unlimited data, he said these factors meant the necessary investment in infrastructure was a major obstacle for providers.

“You remember when Vodafone unfortunately had that issue when they launched their 4G and everyone went on it but they didn’t actually have the infrastructure to handle it? Then everyone left Vodafone,” Mr Schebesta recalled.

While Vodafone has since rectified any network issues and attracted customers back, he said the incident served as a reminder of the challenges faced by Aussie telcos.

“They don’t want to promise [unlimited data] then have mass exodus of customers,” Mr Schebesta said.

But once one telco offers unlimited data plans, other providers would likely feel under pressure to follow suit.

“Someone’s going to move, but I would submit that it’s not going to be super fast because they’ve got to deliver on that promise,” Mr Schebesta said.

Originally published as Aussies slugged with $259 million in excess mobile data fees, up 78 per cent from last year