Do not adjust your monitor, that figure is correct. Not for all customers fortunately, just those on pre-paid and casual data rates.

Looking at that figures seems ridiculous, but follow along and do the maths with me (ok, that’s math for some of you).

The casual data access charge for pre-paid customers on a 3G phone (such as an iPhone) is AU$2.20/MB (GST included). That doesn’t sound so bad, right? Until you recall that there’s 1024MB to the GB. So simple maths gives us 1024 * 2.2 = AU$2,252.80/GB. Ouch!!

It’s worse though if you only have a 2G phone, as the casual rate for 2G pre-paid phone is $22/MB, that is, a massive AU$22,528/GB!!!!!!!! No amount of exclamation marks is sufficient.

So all that looks rather bad, but (relatively speaking), if you purchase Browsing Packs (a data pack with set limits), you can get your data massively cheaper. For example, a 1GB data Browsing Pack costs AU$89 (valid for one month), that is, one 25th of the price of the casual rate.

However, the low end rates for Browser Packs are pretty ordinary though: $5 for 5MB; $10 for 20MB; and $29 for 80MB. Compared to those on plan phones, who get 150MB for $10, and 300MB for $29 (the excess rate is half that of the $10 plan), and you see that pre-paid users are getting shafted.

Consider also, that for pre-paid users, when they exceed their browser pack usage, they automatically fall back to the casual rate - so if you happen to use up your data limit while streaming a video, say, and you get flipped over to casual rates, it could get horrendous.

Down in Oz though we have a problem. By all reports, Telstra’s biggest competitor, Optus, has quite ordinary 3G service. But it’s prices are better. So it’s either expensive data and good service, or cheap data and poor service. Sure that’s the old, “You get what you pay for”, but really, $2,000/GB?

Those on pre-paid mobile phones with lower data requirements are being royally screwed over for data charges by Telstra. Shame on you Telstra.