Telstra's prices are going up in July - and could rise every July after

By Anula Wiwatowska

Last updated 02 June 2022

From July 1, 2022 all of Telstra’s postpaid mobile plan prices are increasing by $3 to $4 per month for both new and existing customers, and you can expect more price hikes year on year.

According to the Telstra website, these new prices are increasing in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which is an indicator of the change in the price of goods and services. Moving forward, Telstra will review, and potentially make changes to plan pricing each year using the CPI rate released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the previous year until the March quarter. From this year onward, any fee changes will be passed on to customers from July 1.

While Telstra is using inflation to justify these price increases, when questioned about whether prices may go down in the case of deflation a spokesperson for Telstra said,

"We are committing to reviewing the prices for our post-paid mobile plans on an annual basis. As a result of that review, we may decide to increase prices in line with CPI, but equally we may decide that it’s not the right environment to increase prices."

For the moment only mobile SIM plans are affected by this decision, with Mobile Broadband plans looking to be the next in the pipeline. Telstra’s site states that,

“From July our postpaid mobile broadband data plans have been updated to include an annual price review. Mobile broadband data plan prices are not increasing in July 2022.”

Internet plans will remain stable in the short term.

Here are how Telstra’s SIM plans look currently;

$65 Basic Upfront SIM Plan

50GB data
Telstra 5G Network in selected areas with 5G devices
Deal: Get your first 3 months device protect on Telstra, then $10/mth.

$65/mth

Min. cost $65

Link not supplied

$65/mth

Min. cost $65

Link not supplied

And here is how these plans will be structured from July 1st:

	Price	Data	4G/5G
Basic (formerly Small)	$58	40GB	4G & 5G Capped to speeds of 250Mbps
Essential (formerly Medium)	$68	180GB	4G & 5G Uncapped
Premium (formerly Large)	$89	300GB	4G & 5G Uncapped

The Basic/Small and Essential/Medium plans will see a $3 per month increase, and the Premium/Large plan will go up by $4. Low income and concession card holders will see a $1 increase regardless of the plan.

Along with these new prices, customers will either get a generous amount of extra data, or in the case of the Basic plan, 5G connectivity for the first time. The download speeds however will be capped to a maximum of 250Mbps down, which is the same cap Telstra has set for MVNOs taking up 5G on the network. For reference, we’ve seen speeds of up to 1Gbps in our 5G speed testing.

Considering the additional data and features, these increases aren’t unreasonable. The data increases on the Essential and Premium plans bring these more closely in line with competitors such as Optus and Vodafone - $65 per month buys 200GB with Optus, while $65 buys 100GB with Vodafone (excluding promotional data offers and discounts) - although the Basic plan is still expensive for 40GB. Not including promos, you’ll usually pay around $25 - $30 a month for plans around this data allowance, but these plans won’t include 5G.

At this stage we don’t know whether Telstra’s new Basic plan will represent good value for consumers looking for 5G on the Telstra network. Boost Mobile is the only Telstra-powered provider offering a 5G plan, but it is a much lower value proposition than Telstra’s current or future SIM plans. We’ll have a more in depth look at these plans once 5G is opened up fully to the Telstra MVNO network in July.