Taking a closer look at their plans, they aren’t too bad. The 1c Txt plan is great if you have family and friends with Telstra mobile (everybody does). These plans also include free data (maybe enough to review some emails). Even their Longlife plans aren’t bad. You need to recharge a minimum of $60 for it last a year, this doesn’t compare great with something like Savvytel, but again, $60 per year isn’t a lot and you are likely to use that much even if the phone is mainly used to receive calls and for emergencies.

The Talk & Txt More plan gives you some bonus minutes and txt the more you recharge. A $30 recharge will probably last for 16 2min calls (1 every second day). Getting a bonus 60 mins, gives you 30 more calls in that 30 days. If you a prolific talker, then at a $100 you get 500 txt and 500 mins. If you were recharging $100 a month, you should seriously consider a contract or sim only plan. They would offer greater value. Compare this plan to Vodafone’s similarly named plan and recharging $30 with Vodafone you get $30 Flexi Cr + 150mins V2V + 100 TXT + 50mins Talk. Slightly more value with Vodafone. Compared to Optus. Optus offers 10c calls, 10c flagfall & 10c txt (no bonus credit) with the Optus Talk & Txt Plan.

The Talktime plan is similar to Talk & Txt, except that the your credit lasts for 60 days and recharging over $60 will still only get you 250 bonus minutes.

In summary these aren’t bad plans. 39c per 30 sec block isn’t cheap but it also isn’t the most expensive. Vodafone offer 39c or 44c, not surprisingly Optus is the same (funny that).