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Virgin pops data quota bubble with new 4G broadband plan

Virgin will offer a 4G broadband plan with no excess data charges for wireless broadband users.
Written by Spandas Lui, Contributor

Virgin Mobile Australia is, from today, offering 4G mobile broadband services to customers under a model that has cast aside the practice of charging users for going over monthly data quotas.

Virgin's 4G mobile broadband offering is available for AU$59 per month with 13GB of included data. The telco will not charge for excess data for the 4G mobile broadband service, but will instead throttle the upload and download speeds of customers who exceed the data limit for the next 250MB before disabling the service until the next billing cycle.

The service is delivered through any 4G-compatible mobile broadband device, and customers have the option to bring their own device or buy a Huawei E5776 WiFi modem on a 12-month contract.

Virgin mobile phone customers with 4G-enabled handsets have been able to access the 4G network for some time.

The caveat of the plan is that Virgin's 4G coverage only extends to Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth for now.

"We are thrilled to extend our 4G offering to post-paid mobile broadband customers who can now experience faster data speeds on the Optus network," Virgin Mobile Proposition director Derek Cummins said in a statement.

The news comes after its sister company, Optus, snapped up AU$649 million worth of spectrum in last week's federal government 4G spectrum auction. Telstra and, surprisingly, TPG also participated in the auction, which made a total of AU$1.96 billion.

Update on May 14, 11.44 a.m. AEST:A Virgin Mobile media representative notified ZDNet that Hobart will not be covered by the telco's 4G network later this year. As such, we have amended the article accordingly.

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