Boost's Telstra prepaid offering gets full 3G

After being unceremoniously dumped as a reseller by Optus late last year, Boost has begun offering Telstra 3G mobile services.

As of last weekend, Boost was no longer allowed to resell Optus mobile services, and has now signed up to resell Telstra services, with prepaid SIMs available to be activated from March 1. Optus has been consolidating its retail branding, and has also ended a number of other retail reseller agreements.

While Boost will not resell Telstra's 4G at this stage, it does have access to the full Telstra 3G service, unlike a number of other mobile telecommunications companies that wholesale Telstra's 3G, such as Kogan. This means that rather than getting a limited download speed of up to 7 megabits per second (Mbps), the full download speed of up to 42Mbps service is available to customers who sign up with Boost.

Boost's coverage area is also slightly larger compared to wholesalers, at 99.3 percent of the population versus 97 percent for others.

Boost is licensed to sell Telstra services directly, unlike other operators, which resell Telstra's wholesale service.

All plans come with unlimited talk, SMS, and MMS to standard national numbers, message bank, and 1300 and 1800 numbers, and start from AU$10 for 500MB to use in five days, going up to AU$40 for 3GB to use over 30 days.

Unlike several Telstra prepaid plans, Boost plans are charged in megabyte increments, meaning that every session is charged for at least 1MB of usage. Outrage over Vodafone's plans to charge in the same way led the company to switch all plans to per-kilobyte charging earlier this week.

Existing Boost Mobile customers will stay with Optus, unless they decide to switch. If they do, they will need a new SIM, and will need to ensure that their handset is compatible with Telstra's network.