Despite Optus not freeing its pre-paid customers from its self-described time limits and constraints for many years now, Optus says it now wants to do just that with its new prepaid plan, dubbed ‘My Prepaid Monthly Plus’, ensuring it isn't just Virgin Mobile doing the data rollover deed.  

Optus will have details of this plan on its website here, but the details won’t actually go live until this Sunday, 5 July 2015. Until then the site linked has the current Optus pre-paid plans which, of course, aren’t as competitive as the new one.

The ‘Optus My Prepaid Plus plan’ will finally free Optus customers from the loss of unused data, as Optus says the plan gives its ‘customers the chance to save their data from expiry – up to a max of 10GB.’

This plan also comes with ‘more data and unlimited standard national calls and texts,’ with Optus clearly going all-out to make competitive and desirable, especially in the face of all those pre-paid MVNOs like Amaysim, Boost and others.

Optus’ new plan starts at $30 for 1.5GB, $45 for 3.5GB or $60 for 6GB - all over 30 days, and all with unlimited standard national landline and mobile calls, and text/MMS messages.

Extra credit for international calls, roaming and premium services costs $5 on the $30 plan, $10 on the $45 plan and $15 on the $60 plan.

Naturally these three plans have data rollover with the data you can collect able to be up to 10GB.

Tim Cowan, the Director of Mobile Marketing at Optus, said: “Prepaid customers’ data usage varies month to month – they might consume a whole lot streaming sporting events one month and far less on holidays during another month. We asked prepaid customers across the country and 82% told us they don’t use all their data every month. [according to GfK’s Prepaid Market Research, May 2015.]

Cowan continued, stating: “Customers hate losing their data and that’s why Optus is launching data rollover, so customers can have what they paid for and use that data whenever they want.

“My Prepaid Monthly Plus gives customers all the benefits of prepaid – paying what they want, when they want – plus more calls, more texts and more data.

“Most prepaid customers like the flexibility that prepaid plans offer with 84% [according to the same GfK research mentioned above] telling us that they want control over their mobile phone spend.

“We know how important calls and texts are to our customers so we are taking our most popular plan to the next level. Our $30 recharge now includes unlimited talk and text making it one of the best prepaid offers in the market.”

Naturally, Optus spruiks its 4G Plus network, which covers 86% of the Australian population as of 30 April 30, and while it isn’t as big as Telstra’s, it’s how you use it that really matters, as the old adage goes.

Optus is also trying its darnedest to attract the youth market by once again sponsoring Nova’s Red Room Global Tour, for 2015, and promising that ‘you could score a seat to the best gigs around the world!’

The way to be in the running to win is to ‘recharge or activate a SIM with $10 or more on Optus Prepaid.’

Then you need to ‘SMS NOVA to 2121 for your unique code, then tell us what song would you like to see performed on the global tour by who and why before 15 July.’

Of course, the youth market only extends so far - you can’t be younger than 18 to enter, with all the details and ‘access to exclusive tour content' here.