A particular Telco in the UK contacted me a week ago regarding my thoughts on the prepaid mobile market in Australia and what was working and not. See last week’s post on this. I offered to assist them by running a poll on my site covering the amount of your prepaid cap credit that is unused each month. This particular Telco is obviously interesting in gauging just how much value they need to make available in say a $40 prepaid cap plan.

Personally I use about 25 – 30% of all of my call and data allowance. When I was using the Optus Prepaid Turbo Cap Plus which offered $300 in calls and 500MB data plus unlimited social media, I was making under $100 in calls each month and using about 150MB data. Given my recharge of $30 was expiring every 30 days, the calls where actually costing me quite a bit.

I decided to move to a cheaper plan with equal value offered by Live Connected (read my Live Connected review here). My call and data volume is no different but I am paying 30% of what I was paying with Optus. I will actually list my call and data volume below later today so you can see it.

I would confidently say that most people would be in the 50% mark with a small % sitting at the top end who’s credit is all used up before it actually expires. My wife is one of those. She uses the SavvyLite plan with 10c calls and 90 days credit. Her $20 recharges don’t last 90 days.

I am keen to hear your experience on how you use your call and data allowance. Please use the Poll to the right of your screen or the one on our website. If you would like, leave a message below.

I might see if I can get some Telco feedback on this.

The Poll being run on the prepaidplans.com.au website was only going to be live for a month but given the strong response, I have kept it alive for a few extra weeks.

So the results look like this at the moment. Given the voting, we can confirm that gotalk is our winner at the moment and relaunch of their product range has obviously made a difference for them in terms of building their customer base. Congratulations gotalk.

Who is the best prepaid mobile provider?
gotalk – 20% (86 votes)
Optus – 16% (70 votes)
Telstra – 16% (68 votes)
Amaysim – 14% (61 votes)
Vodafone – 9% (38 votes)
Virgin – 7% (30 votes)
Crazy Johns – 4% (17 votes)
Lebara – 4% (16 votes)
Boost – 3% (11 votes)
Savvytel – 3% (11 votes)
Just Mobile – 2% (8 votes)
Woolworths – 2% (8 votes)
Grl Mobile – 1% (5 votes)
RevTel – 0% (1 vote)

Total Votes: 430

Over the next month we are looking for the best Prepaid Mobile Plan Provider. This isn’t quite the Logies of the prepaid mobile industry but it will provide us with some indication of which are the most popular plans and plan providers in Australia at the moment.

We ran a similar Poll a year or so ago and the results where quite interesting. However with a few new entrants in the mix and many upgraded offers, I would expect that some of the smaller operators will give some of the larger players a run for their money.

So if you are keen to see your prepaid mobile provider take out the award for Gold, Silver and Bronze, then vote using the Poll on our prepaid mobile voting page or using the Poll to the lower right of your screen.

And the results are:
Telstra Prepaid 20%
Optus Prepaid 16%
Virgin Prepaid 13%
3 mobile Prepaid 9%
Vodafone Prepaid 9%
Dodo Prepaid 7%
Lebara  Mobile 7%
EveryDay Mobile 6%
Savvytel 5%
Just Mobile 3%
Crazy Johns 3%
Boost Mobile 1%
Grl Mobile 1%

The only real surprise packet here was Lebara Mobile. 7% is high for a company that has been on the scene for less than a year. Great result for Lebara Mobile, shows that people are really taking to them.