Millions of Aussies set to pay more for their mobile, NBN services with Telstra
Telstra customers have been slugged with another price hike on the telco giant’s mobile and NBN plans.
Australia’s largest telco has hiked the prices of a number of plans, with millions set to pay more - though there could be a silver lining for one group.
Telstra consumer group executive Brad Whitcomb said Telstra was changing the price of postpaid mobile, mobile data and home small business internet plans as it looks to invest in its network.
“We’re making these changes to help us to invest more to improve our mobile network performance and experience including the reliability and security of our services and continue to ensure we have local support on hand,” Mr Whitcomb said.
Under the new plans, most Australians with Telstra will be slugged between $3 to $5 more each month on their mobile and internet.
Telstra postpaid mobile plans will jump from $65 to $70, while its NBN25 and NBN50 plans will increase by $4 each and the NBN100 plan by $3.
The telco’s lowest-start mobile plans, starter NBN plans, and premium plans will remain the same or be lowered in price.
Telstra has also lowered the plans of its high-speed home internet plans, with the NBN250 going down $1 per month and the NBN1000 coming down $11 per month.
Pre-paid plans will not be changing.
In a statement to NewsWire, Telstra said its customers were its priority.
“As you know, our priority always is to tell our customers first when it comes to any pricing changes and provide as much notice before the change comes in as possible,” the telco said.
The company said when its half-yearly results were released in February that it was investing $800m in its mobile network.
When the results were announced, chief executive Vicki Brady said this was the fourth consecutive year of first-half underlying growth on the back of its mobile business attracting new customers.
“This growth was driven by more people choosing our network, with 119,000 new mobile handheld customers and average revenue per customer growth. Mobile services revenue grew by 3.1 per cent,” Ms Brady said.
The price change comes a day after telco rival Vodafone revealed it was calling on the ACCC to investigate claims Telstra has made about its coverage, alleging the company has “been misleading Australians for more than a decade”.
Vodafone’s owner TPG Telecom has reported the allegations and says it is considering taking legal action against Telstra, claiming the telco has “dramatically overstated” the reach of its mobile network by as much as 40 per cent and used the inflated figures to make “unfair comparisons” against other operators’ coverage.
Telstra has denied the accusations, with a spokesperson telling NewsWire on Monday that any suggestion the telco had misled the public about the size of its network was “completely untrue”.
The ACCC says it is considering the allegations raised by TPG, though mobile operators do not have a standardised or consistent approach to coverage maps used on websites and in advertising.
Originally published as Millions of Aussies set to pay more for their mobile, NBN services with Telstra
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