Something a lot of people don’t understand is that Telstra and Optus resell their 3G/4G/5G mobile networks differently.
Customers of all Optus mobile wholesale resellers like Amaysim, Circles.Life etc have access to all the 3G/4G/5G Optus mobile towers.
In comparison customers of Telstra mobile wholesale resellers like ALDI, Woolworths Mobile and BELONG etc only have access to some Telstra mobile towers, roughly similar in coverage to Optus.
Boost is the only exception because it’s deal with Telstra gives Boost Mobile customers access to all Telstra 3G/4G/5G towers Australia-wide including the rural and regional ones.
Boost customers can use features such as VoLTE & VoWIFI the same as Telstra customers, to improve voice call quality.
With 4G across 99.5% of the population only Telstra and BOOST mobile customers get full access to the biggest network in Australia.
How much bigger? Telstra’s full mobile network covers more than 2.7 million square kilometres – that’s around 1 million square kilometres more than Optus or the Telstra Wholesale mobile network.
I could tell you lots more percentages about the difference in coverage between BOOST and other SIM resellers like ALDI, Belong, Woolworths Mobile etc that use the smaller Telstra Wholesale network but that won’t mean much to most of you.
So I’m going to show you some maps because when you see them the difference in rural and regional areas is obvious. Checkout areas like South West WA and Western QLD as examples.
What Boost customers don’t get compared to full retail Telstra mobile customers is support at a Telstra shop, free streaming of Telstra sponsored sports like AFL, NRL etc and ability to use Telstra Plus points.
Basically Boost is a brand aimed at young people owned by a separate company to Telstra, with a different website.
However the actual payment processing, service and customer support are done by Telstra. When you buy credit and pay via PayPal the payment is to “Telstra Corporation Limited (Boostshop@team.telstra.com)”.
For customer service the people helping you are actually the same customer service staff Telstra mobile customers deal with.
If you don’t care about youth branding it doesn’t matter, Boost will let you signup regardless of your age. I know pensioners, middle aged and young people who use Boost because it offers value for money.
Personally I buy the annual prepaid Boost Sims because they provide the best value but you can choose month by month prepaid top up options.
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