A plea to my dad to get a cheaper phone plan

Ugly veggies. Off-brand Tim Tams. Bulk everything. 

When it comes saving money, my parents taught me every trick in the book. 

But change the topic to phone plans, and there’s something about ‘low-cost’ that arouses suspicion. Especially for Dad. Cause a phone plan’s not like a potato-shaped carrot – he can’t give a good sniff (maybe sneak a bite) to make sure it’ll give him what he wants. 

Maybe it’s because he knows and trusts his current plan, or maybe he thinks these newfangled low-cost alternatives are simply too good to be true. 

Now, I can’t do much about the first one. But as a happy Belong customer – with a penchant for that $20 referral bonus – I’ve got a thing or two to say about the second. Let’s get into it. 

Service to 98.8% of the population 

Belong is owned by Telstra. And like any good parent, Telstra lets Belong use parts of its network (as long as we look after it properly, take it for walks and do our chores). 

That’s why a Belong service covers 98.8% of the population – just shy of Telstra’s 99.4%. If I were a betting woman, I’d take those odds and revel in the savings.  

(And if I weren’t, I’d check Belong's coverage map to check it suited me first.) 

Lots and lots of data 

Belong’s cheapest mobile plan for new customers is $29 a month. And it comes with 25GB of data. That’s $1.16 per GB and quite frankly enough to get me through whatever train delay, long drive, or queue for the latest croissant hybrid you throw at me. 

And if you do run out, you won’t cop a charge for an auto top-up – your download speeds will just slow right down until your allowance resets the next month. 

Unlimited data banking

If you don’t find enough idle time to splurge your data allowance, you get to keep it. 

It just rolls over to the next month, and the next, and the next, until you have enough data to stream every episode of Kath and Kim (plus the movies) when you’re just having one of those days. 

Data gifting 

Belong also lets you give your banked data away to other Belong customers. 

It means if a mate signs up (trust me, I’m working on it), I can flick them a bunch of data to plump up their data bank from the get-go. It’s the least I can do for them after getting me that referral credit. 

No surprises on your bill 

Belong’s plans give you unlimited standard calls and texts within Australia. ‘Standard’ is the key word here: premium numbers aren’t supported on Belong plans. 

You know the ones – they charge $1.50 a minute to hear information you could probably find on the internet. And if a younger member of the household is behind the call, all you get is an eye-watering extra charge on your bill. 

It’s a feature that might have helped a certain person avoid a certain grounding after a certain number of text messages to Australian Idol in 2003. But I digress. 

5G capabilities 

All Belong mobile plans now come with access to parts of the Telstra 5G network, which reaches over 75% of the population (I’m writing this in July 2023).  

So if you’ve retired your tinfoil hat in favour of speedy internet while you’re on the go (and have a compatible device), it feels good to have a mobile plan that supports it. 5G also offers more bandwidth, which means less competing for signal in crowded places. 

There, now you’ve heard the same spiel as my dad has. Now, I’m off to go help him swap out his SIM card.