Vodafone launches prepaid wireless broadband

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 02 May 2009 12:28

IT Industry - Strategy

Vodafone has followed Three and Optus by launching a prepaid 3G wireless broadband service, with pricing almost identical to that charged by Optus, and rather higher than Three's pricing.

Vodafone is charging $19 for 500MB, $29 for 1GB and $49 for 3GB data. All its prepaid credits expire after 30 days but unused data up to 5GB can be rolled over if customers recharge before expiry. Optus offers up to 10GB rollover and Three 15GB.

Optus charges $30 for 1GB, $40 for 2GB on 30 day expiry; $50 for 3GB, $70 for 4GB and $100 for 6GB on 60 day expiry. Three charges $15 for 500MB, $29 for 2GB and $49 for 4GB on 30 day expiry and $149 for 12GB on 60 day expiry.

Both Vodafone and Optus offer additional data (10 and 15 percent respectively) for online recharges paid by credit card. However when you read the fine print you find some differences; Vodafone counts data usage in 1MB block, Optus in 10MB blocks (but the first 30MB on any day counts as only 10MB). iTWire was unable to find similar information Three's web site.

There is also another small point in the Vodafone fine print which we were unable to find in the others: "Data cannot be used for any voice, TXT & certain content services," so better forget Skype or other VoIP services.

The Vodafone service supports Windows and Mac, the latter with some limitations. When Optus launched its prepaid service last August, iTwire reported   that Optus did not support Mac, but according to its web site OS X 10.4 and above is now supported.