Boost mobile coverage
Submitted: Sunday, Jun 12, 2022 at 22:00
ThreadID:
143856
Views:
46556
Replies:
12
FollowUps:
20
This Thread has been Archived
Member - William B
Hello,
I have to change my mobile carrier.
After 4000 k's travelling around western NSW with TPG which is great in
Sydney but woeful the other side of the Blue Mountains I need to jump to something better.
I need to change to Telstra.
My question is, is Boost mobile which uses the Telstra network a viable alternative.
Now that I am retired I need to be mindful of my spending and Boost seems a budget option,
Any input and suggestions welcome,
William
Reply By: qldcamper - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 06:43
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 06:43
I have worked in many remote sites and telstra is the only option.
Yes other companies use their network and are much cheaper but have their drawbacks.
When there is limited bandwidth for voice comunications it is the cheaper alternatives that grind to a hault and get booted first.
In remote camps of up to 2500 rooms it is quite common just after the end of shift.
In small towns not so much of a problem until there is an event such as a bash.
AnswerID:
640843
Reply By: Member - Warren H - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 08:17
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 08:17
As stated Boost coverage is identical to Telstra and this has been our recent experience. Plenty of threads on the Caravanners
Forum about this. We've just been to the Flinders, Arkaroola and
Marree. One of the party was on Optus (not a reseller), the other was Telstra and we were Boost. Boost was superior to Optus everywhere but
Marree where the sheer number of people in town was overloading the Telstra 4G network. We paid $260 for a 12 month 260Gb deal on a Black Friday special, previously we were on the smallest Telstra post paid plan at $35 pm with only 2Gb pm. We would always exceed this when on the road. The Boost plan also includes free o/s calls to select countries.
AnswerID:
640844
Follow Up By: Michael H9 - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 08:40
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 08:40
Optus was in
Marree before Telstra. I recall doing the
Oodnadatta Track a few years ago and Optus was in
Marree,
Coward Springs,
William Creek and
Oodnadatta, with no Telstra at any of them.
Blinman in the Flinders was the same, we were in the pub having lunch and the other guys were using my phone to call out on the Optus SIM. Telstra is king though, I recall getting Telstra service at the Mt Finke
campground on
Googs Track.
FollowupID:
919892
Follow Up By: Peter_n_Margaret - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:12
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:12
Those Optus signals at
William Creek et al were token gestures.
If you could not see the pub, there was no signal. :)
I reckon the signal at Mt Finke is from the Indian Pacific rail line which has virtually full Telstra coverage.
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome
FollowupID:
919902
Follow Up By: Nomadic Navara - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:32
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:32
The Commonwealth Government have a remote area fill in programme. They subsidise the installation of new bases In the early days it was Telstra who got the contracts. When it came to the
Oodnadatta track Optus got serious with their tender and won the contract.
If you want to see who's up who and who's paying the rent with all the
MVNOs, have a look at
List of Australian mobile virtual network operators. You may note in the table that Telstra owns an MVNO,
Belong Mobile . However, it is only on the retail network and not the wholesale network like Boost.
FollowupID:
919906
Follow Up By: Zippo - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:50
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:50
Peter D you got that last bit A-about. "Telstra Retail" is the full scope, Telstra and Boost have access to that. ALL the others (Belong, Aldi, Woolworths etc) ONLY have access to the Telstra Wholesale network.
Also for the Blackspot Program, providers were selected on a site-by-site basis i.e. cheapest for the feds. Optus cleaned up a lot of them as it has its own satellite backhaul, which Telstra at the time could not go close to competing with.
Peter & Margaret: The Optus coverage from those sites was only intended (and required) to cover "the townsite". In the case of
Oodnadatta it runs out at the "telegraph pole" which is about 10km up the track to the west - a long way further than "can-see-it" range.
There is no perfect answer. The best is to have Optus (or reseller - they don't restrict resellers coverage) and Telstra Retail i.e. Telstra or Boost. WHether that is a dual-SIM phone or two separate devices is your own choice. We use separate devices (and a satphone ...).
FollowupID:
919907
Follow Up By: Member - Boobook - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 12:08
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 12:08
If you have a VoWIFI phone with Telstra or Boost, you can make and recieve standard calls over any hotspot or wifi. You may need to turn it on and you generally have to get your phone from a Telstra dealer to have it work.
You can make or receive Telstra calls in
Oodnadatta that way for example.
FollowupID:
919908
Follow Up By: Nomadic Navara - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 15:45
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 15:45
from Zippo "Peter D you got that last bit A-about."
Sorry about that. I did get mixed up there. For the others, go back and re-read my post and it will make more sense.
FollowupID:
919917
Follow Up By: Briste - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 19:42
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 19:42
"If you have a VoWIFI phone with Telstra or Boost, you can make and recieve standard calls over any hotspot or wifi. You may need to turn it on and you generally have to get your phone from a Telstra dealer to have it work."
Yes, up to a point. I struggled with this precise thing at Arkaroola last week. The speedtests indicated that the bandwidth was almost entirely allocated to downloads and very little for uploads. So in my Optus VoWiFi calls, I could hear the other parties quite clearly, but they found it impossible to hear me sufficiently clearly to understand me. Fortunately there were (now-free) Telstra payphones.
I've also found that I can send an Optus SMS over a wi-fi connection, but I don't get replies. Sometimes not until I reach Optus coverage and sometimes not at all.
So there can be significant limations. On other occasions I have been able to make VoWiFi calls without issue, so Arkaroola _may_ have been an exception.
FollowupID:
919919
Follow Up By: Member - Boobook - Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 17:08
Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 17:08
Briste, that's a reason I specifically said with Telstra or Boost. Optus has handover issues, and even struggles to hand over between their 4G and 5G cells. They get stuck on 5G then can't switch back to 4G until you turn the radio or phone off and back on. They keep promising they will fix it but haven't yet.
FollowupID:
919949
Follow Up By: Briste - Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 19:49
Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 19:49
Yes, using my Boost SIM directly to make voice calls was one solution to my problem, but as the SIM usually resides in a Nighthawk modem that meant doing the SIM shuffle, and so using a payphone was the easier option on this occasion.
FollowupID:
919951
Follow Up By: Nomadic Navara - Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 19:57
Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 19:57
I have been led to believe that SIMs should not be shuffled too much between the devices as they are a little too fragile to stand being continually being located.
FollowupID:
919953
Reply By: Member - McLaren3030 - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:06
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:06
Hi William,
This subject has been covered before on this
forum, there are a number of threads regarding this if you do a search.
For the best mobile phone coverage overall, you are better to have two phones, one on Optus, and one on Telstra or Boost Mobile. As others have stated, Boost Mobile uses the whole Telstra Network.
Optus were clever in that they installed
infrastructure in some remote
places where Telstra did not have coverage, now Telstra is catching up installing their own
infrastructure in these
places.
From recent reading, the best telephone coverage for remote areas Australia wide is still a Satellite Phone on the Iridium Network. The Starlink Satellite network will be better from what I have read, once it is fully operational across the whole country. Currently it still does not cover all of Australia.
Below is a map of the mobile phone coverage Australia wide, not sure how recent it is, but it is not that old.
Mobile Phone Coverage
Macca.
AnswerID:
640845
Follow Up By: Zippo - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 14:16
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 14:16
Macca, it's close enough to current to not matter. The thing to note (for newbies to coverage maps) is the almost total absence of Telstra Wholesale coverage:
* east of
Laverton to Uluru
* almost anywhere "country" NT except Alice and
Katherine
* the top half of SA
* between Alice and central QLD
* etc etc
In simple terms, TW is comprehensively unsuitable for outback travel. Ditto Optus, but there are still spots with Optus only so the best approach remains Optus or TR.
The original scope of TW was cast to match Optus presence across regional areas. As Optus expanded their coverage, TW remained set in stone - and has hardly changed anywhere - while their retail coverage has grown.
In the remote areas where Optus "stole a march" on Telstra in the early rounds of Blackspot and Telstra are forced to play catch-up, it is interesting to consider that Telstra were unwilling to go without that catch-up pressure. Just ask Trevor Wright at
William Creek, who spent years lobbying and imploring Telstra to do something - all to no avail.
FollowupID:
919911
Reply By: Briste - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:20
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:20
Boost has the same coverage as Telstra, but doesn't always have the same speed. Last I checked, it didn't have access to 4GX technology, nor 5G. The above posts suggest that 5G is starting to happen.
Having just done a swing through the
Flinders Ranges I was stunned by the tiny
places that had both Optus 3G and Telstra 4G, e.g.
Rawnsley Park,
Blinman,
Beltana. The couple that run the excellent
Beltana camping site expained that Optus had a contract with the SA Government to provide coverage where they needed it, so they came first and at the time it was 3G. Telstra came later with 4G, and a taller antenna.
It's certainly the case that Optus can be faster in practice if everyone is on the Telstra service, e.g.
Rawnsley Park, provided you're close enough to the 3G antenna. It pays to have both carriers and to
check speeds when there's both, rather than to simply assume that 4G is faster
AnswerID:
640847
Follow Up By: Member - Warren H - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:54
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 09:54
As you wrote Briste, Telstra is playing catch up in northern SA, they were the only service in
Kulgera as
well in 2019. The original Optus service was part of the Federal Mobile Blackspot program round 3, I think. You can find the details of the program and roll out if you wade through the webpages, perhaps completed by now. When we went through the area in 2019, it was interesting where you could find an Optus signal. Telstra were in the process of catching up. We're just back from the area as
well it seems they have caught up and have better service in some. While we were away Boost got access to the Telstra 5G network (where it exists) , great for hotspotting the PC.
FollowupID:
919896
Reply By: Bazooka - Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:53
Monday, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:53
TPG and Tls have recently reached an in-principle agreement to share some
infrastructure in fringe/regional areas William, so depending on what the details of the deal reveal (and ACCC approval) it may not be too long before TPG is using Tls towers etc outside cities.
OPTUS claims this will reduce competition and has - not unexpectedly - opposed the deal. I have no expertise/inside info but having read a little on the proposal and objection I can't see any reason why the ACCC would kill the deal.
Google will find info/discussion on the topic, here's one link:
Tls-TPG Agreement
If you decide to go to BOOST be aware that there have been quite a few recent complaints about the lack of service if you have connection/account/number porting issues. Mentioning the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) might help focus their attention if problems persist.
This
DEALS WEBSITE has regular discounts on Boost 12 month pre-paid kits. Note that these discounts are usually unavailable to continuing customers. You'll find comments and discussion on Boost customer service in deals and
forum posts on the same website - which has many tech-savvy members.
AnswerID:
640855
Reply By: Matt W13 - Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 16:05
Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 at 16:05
Boost is Telstra's no frills service. It uses 100% of the Telstra network.
The only problem you can have is contacting support and/or getting info on things can be darn hard, because they don't offer much support (frills).
Telstra and Boost are the only 2 you have that use the entire Telstra network.
Another thing to consider could be getting a cheap plan from anyone for your mobile and hiring a sat phone when you go away. Just a thought.
AnswerID:
640872
Reply By: Member - William B - Wednesday, Jun 15, 2022 at 13:01
Wednesday, Jun 15, 2022 at 13:01
Thank you every one for your suggestions.
I think I will look into Boost mobile, they seem to foot the bill.
I have a phone on a Telstra long life plan I use to give my wife a quick 2 rings then hang up and she can then ring me back, texts and internet are expensive on that plan.
I also have a satellite phone on Pivotel which I can do the same and Anita can call me back on normal mobile rates and of course is there for emergencies.
Once again,
Thank you.
William
AnswerID:
640885