Optus ‘yes’ Timeless plans: timeless after all, ‘Fair Go Policy’ snafu

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 24 July 2008 19:10

Opinion and Analysis

You can find the newly updated Optus Mobile Fair Go Policy here. 

In section 15 of this document, which you should read for yourself, the new ‘yes’ Timeless section re-iterates the unlimited nature of the service, but only for consumer and non-commercial use.

Essentially, if you use the service for commercial purposes, even including “calls made for a business operated at home”, Optus can cancel the service without notice to you.

Optus say that they are doing this “without limiting the meaning of ‘unreasonable use’, in respect of: The Local and National Calls and the Text Offer for consumer customers, we supply the service for the purpose of you making calls from your personal mobile phone, on our network for your own personal use and not for any commercial purpose.”

Commercial use includes the “calls made for a business operated at home, running a telemarketing business or call centre, SIM boxing or using other devices, re-supplying or reselling the service, or other similar activities”.

So, the ‘yes’ Timeless plan is timeless for the specified included calls and messaging types, and may not be used for business purposes.

As I am not a lawyer, I cannot say if a single business call from your personal phone will give Optus the right to cancel your service, but clearly if you abuse the ‘yes’ Timeless service for business uses you are very likely to have your service cancelled.

So is it still a good deal?

Well, given that Optus is promoting it as a replacement to your personal, consumer home phone, something that large volumes of business calls are generally not made on, you really need to see how much you are spending each month on local and national calls, and how much your line rental is.

If it costs more than $113.95, $119 or $129 per month, on a regular basis, or the combination of your personal, consumer home phone and your personal, consumer mobil phone costs more than these amounts, on a regular basis, then the short answer is ‘yes’, it’s a better deal, especially given the $113.95 plan offers 200MB of data per month, and the $129 plan offers 2GB of data per month.

But if your call volumes are lower than these amounts, on a regular basis, for both home and mobile personal, consumer services, then you’d be better off sticking with your existing arrangements. It also depends on what existing contracts you are, or aren't on, which may limit your ability to take up one of the 'yes' Timeless plan offered by Optus until you are no longer under contract. 

So, there you have it. ‘yes’ Timeless is timeless under strict consumer conditions.

If the additional benefits of text messaging, video calls, MMS and more than home phones can’t do are of interest to you and you are already paying more per month than the ‘yes’ Timeless plans, they’re worth investigating.

That said, it’s also worth seeing what 3 Mobile or Vodafone might do to respond first. There might be an even better deal on the way!