Casual Mobile Broadband

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Rickles

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#151579 29-Aug-2014 16:20

For a number of years we used to have a great 'casual' data service from Vodafone whereby when using a dongle modem you could get 10MB per day for $1, or 100MB for 30 days for $10.

I understand that this service was terminated in March this year, and like many other telcos one has to now buy (as a minmum) a 30 day data pack, unless prepared to pay $0.50c per MB!

Are there any reasonable casual/daily services available in NZ?

grant_k

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#1118075 29-Aug-2014 17:09

Telecom used to have a casual plan with their XT data sticks that was ideal for this kind of thing. It only cost when you used it, and the rest of the year, the credit just sat there. Early this year they discontinued the plan and forced all existing customers onto a $30 per month for 500MB plan. Your $30 gets gobbled up at quite a fast rate until you've used 300MB, and then you get a further 200MB for 'free'. Well not really, as you've already paid through the nose for the first 300MB :(

All of the telcos are now trying to force you onto a $16 or $19 per month plan with a whole lot of extra stuff that you don't necessarily need. What works best for me is 2D's $19 plan with carryover data and minutes. I make pretty much all my outgoing calls with my mobile and yet struggle to get through 90 mins per month. The 500MB per month has now accumulated to well over 1.5GB as I'm not keeping up there either.

Still, looking on the bright side, we no longer pay anything for toll calls, and $19 per month gives me everything I need and more. It's the nearest thing I could find to what I used to have until Telecom canned their casual data plan.

Aredwood

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#1118305 29-Aug-2014 23:20

They got rid of it probably due to people mostly having smartphones now. The issue being they often have apps running in the background that use data without prompting first. You would be annoyed if you got charged $1 each day of the month solely because your phone was checking for firmware updates. Or something else that uses a very small amount of data but still triggers the $1 charge. Imagine the support calls:

Customer: Why have I been charged? I didn't use the internet on my phone that day.
Telco: [checks logs] Our system shows that your phone used 0.05mbit of data that day.
Customer: But I didn't run the web browser app, so I shouldn't have used any data.
Telco: Another app or the phone itself would have used that data.
Customer: I don't believe you.

With 30 day data packs you won't get this problem of update checks ect triggering per day charges.

linw

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#1118375 30-Aug-2014 09:17

Very true. That casual rate meant you paid $30/mth so the $19/mth deal looked good.

coffeebaron

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#1118483 30-Aug-2014 12:27

Vodafone's 512KB $10 per month is probably as close to a casual data as you can get.

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1eStar

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#1118787 30-Aug-2014 22:28

It's not casual data, but for variable data usage month to month, you might find it economic to consider 2degrees 12gb for $100 lasts for 180days only works in 2degrees native coverage aka MBB zone.

Or Skinny do a data sim deal through Harvey Norman, 5GB for $60 lasts 180days. This works wherever you get Spark coverage.

Do the sums for cents/MB and it starts to make sense/MB

SteveON

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#1118818 31-Aug-2014 06:59

coffeebaron: Vodafone's 512KB $10 per month is probably as close to a casual data as you can get.

KB?

coffeebaron

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#1118834 31-Aug-2014 09:04

SteveON:
coffeebaron: Vodafone's 512KB $10 per month is probably as close to a casual data as you can get.

KB?

Just checking who was awake :) yea 512MB

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Rickles

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#1177380 17-Nov-2014 14:32

UPDATE: Spark have told me that all their Pre-Paid accounts come automatically with a casual rate data usage of 10MB per day for $1.00 (additional charges apply after that), that the SIM stays active without top-up for 365 days, and that balances do not expire for 365 days.

Ideal then for emails etc when travelling outside free wifi areas

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#1177386 17-Nov-2014 14:52

grant_k: Telecom used to have a casual plan with their XT data sticks that was ideal for this kind of thing. It only cost when you used it, and the rest of the year, the credit just sat there. Early this year they discontinued the plan and forced all existing customers onto a $30 per month for 500MB plan.

These were great plans to use when I travelled nationally with my laptop. The only downside was the billing was based on the calendar month, so use over two months was more expensive than within a single month.

I had quite a large balance, so was just paying $10 per year to keep the account ticking over to use as needed. At least I got the balance back in the end, but I'd rather still have the option to use the plan.