Telstra with MASSIVE increases (some doubled) to charges when using phone overseas - Can I break my contract?

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Telstra

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  2pro4sho on 30/11/2015 - 17:55

  It's possible that the overseas carriers have increased their roaming prices so Telstra is forced to pass on the costs.

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  ilostnemo on 30/11/2015 - 18:10

  Am I missing something, why would you need this service. Even at the previous prices it was too expensive. If I had to carry my phone and had to phone people back, I'd definitely buy a sim card from the country I'm in. The hotels have wifi and so do most shops so no real reason to use data. I went to America for a month picked up an AT&T sim card. $40 i had 5gb and unlimited calls.

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    ChickenTalon on 30/11/2015 - 18:15

    You're missing something.

    I travel to regional parts of Aus and often outside of town centres, so figured Telstra would be best for coverage. This was enough of a benefit to warrant the extra prices they were charging for global roaming before the increases.

    I don't have the option of picking up a local SIM at every place i travel to. Sometimes I'm only there for a few days. I also need to make\receive quite a few calls using my aus number. Yes, most hotels outside of aus have free wifi, but it's often really really bad. Way worse than mobile data.

    With the price increases it makes the coverage benefits of Telstra very marginal.

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  Wibbleman on 30/11/2015 - 18:17

  So it looks like they've re-zoned Thailand and Indonesia. This may be in line with Optus as they have moved to a 2 zone model where majority of countries fit into zone 1.
  Costs are similar in Telstra zone 2 to Optus zone 1 except Optus gives you less data packaged:
  http://www.optus.com.au/shop/mobilephones/international-roam…

  Can I get more text, talk and data with an Optus Travel™ Pack?
  Yes. Pre-purchase an Optus Travel™ Pack for $10 per day to get unlimited talk and SMS plus 50MB of data to use in Zone 1 countries. Need even more? No sweat. You can buy multiple days and accumulate the total data allowance. For example, buy 5 days and use your 250MB any time over the 5-day period

  I would consider a local sim if you wanted to save money. If you need your phone number there then it's one carrier over another for local. Comes to network coverage and preference.

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  modsec802 on 30/11/2015 - 22:37

  If you can handle the Optus reception their travel packs are pretty good: $10 per day and you can select the exact length of your stay: 8 day trip is $80.
  You get 50MB per day pooled over days and unlimited calls anywhere.
  I use this quite often and never had a problem.
  The only one better is Vodafone where it's $5 day and you use your allowance from home which works well when you're on a big data plan.