Telstra

What Simplicity also comes with is a competitive international call offer. Now don’t expect Telstra to be the cheapest here but 15c/min is available to these countries Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Germany, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, USA, Vietnam.

Prepaid Cap Encore is the latest iteration of the Telstra Prepaid Caps. The value in the plans has improved quite a bit since they where launched and a major improvement has also been seen in the data on offer. Over the past few months they moved from per megabyte increments to per Kilobyte, which offers great value and in the world of prepaid is relatively unknown. The only disappointment I have in the Encore range is that the data allowance has actually been reduced for both the $30 and $40 recharge, going from 500MB to 400MB and 1GB to 600MB respectively. I don’t enjoy seeing data go backwards particularly from a large player like Telstra. The Encore has 5 entry points, the $30 recharge offers $250 in calls ($2.17 for a 2 minute call) and 400MB of data. The next step is $40 with $550 in calls and 600MB, then we move to $1000 in calls and 800MB at $50, $70 offers 1.5GB and $1500 in calls and finally $100 offers $2000 in calls and 3GB.

At the $40 range the Telstra offer is OK. Optus Prepaid Social offers 350 minutes to anyone, unlimited to Optus, unlimited TXT and 1GB (plus unlimited social media), Boost has unlimited calls and 3GB and Woolworths has $500 in calls ($250 to Woolworths) and 5GB for $29. The offer is competitive but not the best, although the per KB increments do offer you good value.

What the Prepaid Cap Encore is also offering at the moment is unlimited evening calls from 6pm to 6am every day of the week. It started as a promotion but has now become a standard part of the offer. I would really have loved more data with these plans, particularly because Telstra also offers 4G access with all of its prepaid plans, whilst Optus only offers it with the Prepaid Social plan.