Telstra's shared data plans go live

Mobile users who want to be able to share their monthly data limits across their mobile phones, tablets, or Wi-Fi hotspots will be up for at least AU$20 extra per month in order to do so through Telstra.

The new data sharing plans, first outed by Telstra in April, were launched today, with the company stating that letting customers pool their monthly data limit across as many as four devices would "remove the need to look for alternative connection points such as Public Wi-Fi access, which is often inconvenient and can be vulnerable to security risks".

But the convenience comes at a high price, with the standard monthly plan adding an extra AU$10 per month just to access the data sharing option, and then an additional AU$10 per month for each extra SIM for the other devices.

The company has put forward its AU$80 per month plan (excluding additional SIM costs) which includes just 1.1GB of data per month — with a bonus 1GB of data for customers signing up this year.

Telstra's group managing director for consumer, Karsten Wildberger said that the decision to go down the path of bucket data plans was in response to customer demand.

"This streamlined approach to data sharing is about making it simple for our customers to use all the mobile data they are paying for, manage it on one monthly bill and top up their usage easily if required," he said in a statement.