Telstra's plan refresh: the difference between the old & the new

Telstra has changed up its plans, retiring its long-standing “Mobile Accelerate” suite in favour of the new “Go Mobile” line. The first four of the new gang are similarly-priced to the old guard, and there is now a new “Premium” plan for a whopping $195 per month.

Australia’s largest telco has also finally followed the pack by ditching expensive per-MB overage billing in favour of auto-upgrade options like those employed by Optus and Vodafone since last year.

From now on, if you go over your monthly data allowance you will be charged $10 and another 1GB will be added to your plan for the duration of the month. Go over again and the same will happen. At the end of the month, your plan's cost and data cap will revert to its original amount. This works out to about 1c per MB, compared to the 3c per MB used that Telstra used to employ.

Meet the new plans

Basic plan inclusions for data and value for calls and texts are largely unchanged for some, drastically improved for others. The main differences come in the form of short-term and permanent extras like free subscriptions (short-term) and overseas calls (permanent fixture).

The bonus data on the new Go Mobile plans is a bit of a mystery. Currently it's unknown if this will be a permanent fixture, as it has been in the past with Telstra, or if at some point the extra GBs will vanish, leaving you with the base plan.

$55 Go Mobile

There's not much difference on the new $55 plan, apart from the fact that its full 1GB data is now no longer considered "500MB + 500MB bonus data".

$70 Go Mobile

The new $70 plan offers more base data and a larger call & text value.

Right before the plan switch-over the old $70 Accelerate plan did have a 1GB bonus data deal going, bringing its data inclusion in line with the current 2.5GB offering, but this had hardly been the standard.

$95 Go Mobile

The $95 Go Mobile plan has significantly more data than its predecessor, even without its 1GB bonus data. It also sports Unlimited calls and texts within Australia, a privilege for which you would have paid $130 per month under the old scheme.

$135 Go Mobile

The new $135 plan is $5 more per month than its Mobile Accelerate equivalent, but for that you get $150 worth of calls to select overseas destinations and more than twice as much data.

$195 Premium Mobile

The Premium Mobile plan has no past comparison. This is a new mega-tier from Telstra, complete with a huge data, an UNLIMITED monthly international call and text allowance, UNLIMITED overseas roaming for text and calls, 1.5GB free data roaming per month, and a free subscription to Telstra's New Phone Feeling scheme.

Alex Angove-Plumb

Digital Content Editor

Alex Angove-Plumb is a Digital Content Editor at WhistleOut and an award-winning journalist. He's been in the tech publishing industry since 2010, putting him a few short years away from the title of Grizzled Ancient in his chosen profession. He was an original WhistleOut-er before running NBN Co's corporate blog for two years, then moving on to a lengthy stint at CHOICE. Now he's come home.

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