We're all guilty for chewing through too much data sometimes, so if there's a way for you to save on your monthly data allowance, why not?
With the rise of Spotify and Apple Music, streaming music has become extremely popular. In the past, many providers offered free Spotify streaming in order to draw in customers, but it's become quite a rare mobile plan feature these days.
Currently Telstra, Optus and Boost are the only mobile providers that offer data-free streaming.
Here's what Telstra, Optus and Boost Mobile offer in the way of data-free streaming.
Keep in mind that while streaming these services won't use up any of your data, you'll need an individual subscription in place already in order to access it. Telstra, Optus and Boost won't be paying for your monthly subscription fees.
Optus no longer offers data-free music streaming, but does offer its customers bonus data to use on specific video streaming services.
We've shown mobile plans from Optus, Telstra and Boost below that come with some form of data-free streaming.
Data-free streaming is when your mobile phone company has a deal with an entertainment platform where using that platform won't use up your monthly data limit. It's a rare and limited feature on mobile plans these days, and is only offered by the three providers (which we'll cover in the next section).
While data-free streaming seems like a nice extra to have, we don't think it's enough of a draw these days to consider signing up to a plan purely for this feature.
Consider what's actually on offer from the three providers above when it comes to data-free streaming. Besides Optus, the other providers only offer data-free music streaming, which doesn't actually use up very much data at all.
You're often better off picking a plan that offers you enough data to use when you're out of the house to cover all of your activities, rather than relying on data-free streaming.
That being said, if you need to stream music constantly on your phone using your mobile data for work or leisure purposes, perhaps data-free streaming would be a nice perk.
If you think you need a higher data limit so that you can stream music and videos without access to data-free streaming, you might want to consider 'unlimited' data mobile plans.
Some plans, such as postpaid mobile plans from Optus, Vodafone, and Telstra, offer "unlimited" data. You won't be charged for excess data once you've reached your monthly cap, instead your download speed will be reduced (capping it at between 1.5Mbps-25Mbps, depending on the plan/provider).
1.5Mbps is technically enough for streaming standard definition video, but you may still end up with buffering. Luckily, the data caps from these providers are often high enough that you shouldn't run into the slowed down speed caps.
Initial text message trials will start in 2025.
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