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Linux: Using Optus at the moment while on holiday did a speedtest and got 360Mbp/s down

John

you STILL doing speedtests!?!?

OP, Airports in Oz, or nearest shopping centre. You can get good deals with things like Aldi Mobile if you have a postal address prior to arrival.

I used Simcorner to get a SIM card for the UK and Europe - what arrived was a 3UK SIM card.

What I later learnt is that 3UK do not do 4G in Europe (exception was in Austria) - my father will advise how many times I complained about being on EDGE while trying to play Pokemon Go (it is slow to the point of being unusable). What was worse - the day outage.. thankfully I had a Skinny SIM Card with me - $15 for 1GB/7 days. Was way better than using the 3UK SIM card - the 3 card only worked correctly while actually in the UK (though not in the Underground)

Do a bit of on-line research before you get there. Last time I was in Oz I got an Optus plan that gave you 1Gb per day for $1 per day.

If you want unlimited calls back home, Amaysim have a mobile plan that includes unlimited calls (11 countries) and SMS and MMS (33 countries) and 10 GB of data for AU$30/28 days. You can pick up triple sized SIMs at most convenience stores, supermarkets and gas stations. AFAIK, it's the cheapest prepaid option that includes unlimited calls to NZ (Belong have a cheaper plan, but that's not available on prepaid)

It looks like Vodafone are the best deal at the moment.

$25 gets you 50 GB of data for 35 days. Details here:

https://www.vodafone.com.au/prepaid/plans

Just a quick update on my Oz experience.

We have just been to Brisbane for 10 days. Exited customs at Brisbane Airport and the Vodafone store is straight ahead out the door. They don't have the same deals as the Vodafone shops but were selling 40 GB / 35 days for $20. I bought a sim and Aaron from Vodafone had it activated within a couple of minutes. It lived in a wifi hotspot for the entire 10 days. They were doing a roaring trade with these sims.

Our hotel had wifi but the contention ratio was rubbish and it was unusable at peak times. The hotspot became the go to device and everyone was happy. We only ended up using about 20 GB.

Cheers, Matt.

Adding my experience with Optus - Was just in the Gold Coast for a week and picked up two sims at the airport - 35GB + 10GB streaming data - 30 days for $20 a sim. 

This also included unlimited calls to NZ Landlines and Mobiles (as well as a number of other countries) which was great as had to make a few calls while I was away. 

Speedtest  out at the airport was 284Mbps Down - 33Mbps Up, Varied in Surfers paradise, anywhere from 50Mbps down to 165Mbps down.

My AirBnB didn't have wifi, and the building it was in was $70 for 25gb so used one sim in a hotspot and one sim in my phone during the visit.

Never had any issues with coverage the whole time, even when it was busy periods or near the theme parks. Would highly recommend.