ALDI Mobile Phone Plan

Confirm - I am with Telstra and my wife Aldi. On a recent trip to Birdsville there were a number of occasions where I had coverage and she did not.

Tony

Go with Boost. Its coverage is identical to Telstra. Infact it is Telstra.

Telstra does not give its wholesalers 100% access to its network (maybe due to them not wanting to pay for it).
Lots of remote areas are not covered by the Aldi's etc.
Check the coverage map from the providers.

I was was Aldi and suffered the same fate no coverage in outer areas, we log onto the internet with Telstra no problems but no coverage in the same location with Aldi (outer Qld) I changed to Telstra prepaid to solve the problem.

Thanks all for the confirmation. Looks like I'm sticking with Telstra or maybe Boost.

Telstra and Boost are the only options for their full ("retail") network coverage. All the others only have access to the Telstra wholesale network. It's not that the resellers (Aldi etc) don't want to pay for full network access - Telstra simply don't offer it to them. Their thinking (?) was to mimic Optus coverage. If a town had Optus, then that part of the Telstra retail network would be included in the wholesale scope. By comparison, ALL Optus resellers get access to their complete network coverage.

The full story is to view the coverage maps.

Several years back now, Optus set up a pilot site at Oodnadatta. Since then, they have added a couple of dozen of these microcells across northern SA (Mungerannie, Marree, William Creek etc) and up the Stuart Hwy. Seems Telstra's demarcation boundary between wholesale and retail is set in concrete, so the old adage "in the bush it's Telstra or nothing" is now far from a given.

Solution (apart from satphone) is a cheap Optus SIM (if your primary service isn't on Optus already) and a Telstra pre-paid one. Good reason to keep your old cellphone when you update.

Can anyone shed any light on this then?

A couple of times when travelling we got a text from telstra saying we were in ( i think from memory) a micro cell and gave a link to be able to use it, but we were out of range before it was worth the trouble.

Also at innamincka you get full telstra signal strength but it asks for a credit card before you can use it.

Apparently telstras anywhere in Australia actually means almost anywhere.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the absurdity of the mobile phone business out of the major areas , Gem Tree just North and East of Alice has only Optus mobile close to the 'Shop' ...it has Telstra public phone and landline , here is the absurdity , it has 'micro' WiFi Telstra at the campgrounds near the ablution blocks supplied by the NT Govt tourist dept , takes a little to get 'on' and is slow BUT perfect for emails and messenger .....

I'm appalled at the lack of mobile coverage,and therefore Twitter, for our intrepid
Outback Travellers. Surely this is a safety issue. :)
Dave.

Aldi is useless outside of metro / main towns, nothing in Birdsville, only Alice, and highway 1. My friends wife has a dual sim phone, with Telstra/optus and a third Vodaphone in the pouch. Its amazing where she can pick up coverage with optus and no Telstra, or Vodaphone but no optus….

PS, you cant beat aldi 12 month plans, $250 for 66 gig/ unlimited calls/sms