Optus Data offer to customers is a joke worth laughing at

Hate to say I told you so, but I saw this coming. Optus has offered 200GB of free data to their customers who are on postpaid accounts and enabled unlimited data weekends for customers on postpaid. And, that offer is laughable.

To be clear, for prepaid customers, I think unlimited data isn’t a bad thing for 5-6 weeks until year’s end.

But for postpaid customers, 200GB of data is ridiculous. Here’s why.

The cheapest Optus plan is $49 per month, and for that you get 30GB of data. Pay $69 and you’ll get between 220 and 500GB of data – every single month.

In Australia, the average mobile data use is 15GB per month. VERY FEW people need more than that, let alone come close to their monthly data limit.

Additionally, today there are no excess data charges on mobile plans, use 201GB on a 200GB plan and you just don’t get the fastest speeds on that last 1GB of data.

When Telstra had a large outage in 2016 they offered a “Free Data Day” as compensation. You could argue 200GB is a “free data day” but times are different now – very different.

Firstly, the plans are data packed. Back in 2016 getting 10GB of data a month was huge.

Secondly, we worried about excess data costs. Any additional Megabyte cost you MONEY – remember Bill Shock?

What Optus has done here is put out a gesture that will be perceived as impressive by some, but is hollow and off the books for them.

You see, firstly, people have to sign up for the 200GB – many won’t bother.

Then there’s the fact that most people simply don’t need it because of their enormous existing data allowances.

Add to that the fact there is no announced compensation for Home Broadband customers at all.

The bottom line here is that Data doesn’t “cost” Optus money. Well, not enormous amounts anyway.

SingTel the company that owns Optus took a hit on the stock market yesterday, and “markets” know these kind of issues are going to cost the business on the bottom line.

So why, why on earth did Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin not just write $30,000,000 off this quarter’s budget and offer a $5 credit to the account of all Postpaid customers.

It’s the only simple stroke of the pen response that’s worthwhile to customers.