
Everyone with a Telstra or Boost Mobile prepaid plan will soon get a free trial of 5G, with the providers rolling out the offer over the coming weeks.
If you're a customer with either telco, you should soon get a text message saying you've received the upgrade, provided you have an active recharge - if you haven't already. It may still take a further 24 hours before you can get 5G connectivity, however. And of course, you'll need to have both a 5G phone and be in a 5G coverage area to actually use the next-generation network.
As part of the trial, prepaid customers will be able to use the Telstra 5G network with uncapped speeds. This is notable, as Telstra will soon be imposing a speed cap of 250Mbps on its cheapest 5G plan and on 5G plans sold by its MVNO partners.
This free trial will run until September 26, after which plans will go back to good old fashioned 4G connectivity.
Excluding the free trial, there's just a single Telstra prepaid plan and a single Boost Mobile plan that have 5G connectivity, and both are pretty pricey. On Telstra, you need to pay $60 for a 28-day recharge to get 5G. On Boost, you're looking at $70 for a prepaid recharge.
As such, this potentially opens 5G on prepaid to a whole lot more customers - assuming they have a compatible device. Given the trial lasts almost four months, Telstra is seemingly hoping that it will at least convince some that 5G is useful enough to upgrade to a more expensive plan by the time it ends.
Here is Telstra's current range of prepaid plans:
And here is Boost's current range of prepaid plans:
The news follows Boost Mobile launching its first 5G plan. This was also notable, as it marked the first time a Telstra powered provider offered 5G.
Alex Choros