It certainly seems like many of us will be spending a lot more time with our phones connected to our home WiFi for the foreseeable future. Of course, using home internet means you won’t be using the mobile data you’re paying for. Time to downgrade.
If you’re looking to save a bit of money while you’re stuck at home, one of the simplest options is downgrading your phone plan. After all, there’s no point in paying $50 or so per month for a 90GB phone plan you aren’t using.
If you’re on a contract-free plan or your contract has expired, you can easily swap to a cheaper option while keeping your number. Every provider delivers SIM cards by post, so the furthest you’ll have to go to get a new plan is your mailbox. And when this is all over, it’s just as easy to swap to a plan with a more robust allowance.
With that in mind, here’s a look at three of our favourite budget phone plans.
amaysim cheap phone plans
If all you want is something simple, you’ll want to consider amaysim’s entry-level prepaid recharge. You’ll get 1GB on a $10 28-day recharge. Out of the box, this plan will automatically recharge. However, if you switch off automatic recharge via the amaysim app, you’ll be moved to a pay-as-you-go plan when your inclusion expires.
This means you can keep your number, and keep receiving texts and phone calls without an active recharge. You will however need to make a new recharge or add pay-as-you-go credit if you want to reply to a text, make a call, or use data. Standard calls are billed at 15 cents a minute, as are text, while data is billed at 7.2 cents per MB.
If you choose to add pay-as-you-go credit, it will come with a 365-day expiry.
If you don’t add any credit, your pay-as-you-go-plan will last for a further 337 days, after which you’ll enter a 90-day grace period where you need to recharge. If you don’t recharge by the end of these three months (or port it to another provider), you’ll forfeit your number.
amaysim is powered by the Optus network.
Belong cheap phone plans
Belong is another one of your cheapest options, offering 1GB per month on the Telstra network. One useful Belong perk is data rollover: any data you don’t use will be available for use to you later on, so if you only use 500MB one month, you’ll have 1.5GB available to you the next.
Belong data rolls over indefinitely, for as long as you’re an active customer. This means, for example, you could sign-up to Boost’s 10GB plan for $25 for your first month with the telco, and then drop down to the $10 plan the following month if you’re feeling the need for a little extra data in your stockpile.
Moose Mobile cheap phone plans
If you don’t want to drop your data allowance as drastically, Moose Mobile is currently offering 6GB for $14.80 per month on a contract-free plan. In many cases, that kind of money only gets you two or three gigs, making this one of the best affordable phone plan options around right now.
Moose Mobile is powered by the Optus network.
Alex Choros is Managing Editor at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website.
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