With Telstra, Optus and Amayism recording strong total year-on-year growth in prepaid mobile subscribers, the Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data to March reveals that consumers aged 16-years plus made up the bulk of the growth in smartphone penetration at 84% and up to 90% among customers on a postpaid plan.

And, in the postpaid  market Telstra is the telco which seems to be losing out the most to Optus.

According to Kantar, within the postpaid market Optus continues to acquire new subscribers -  particularly from Telstra - but also from Vodafone, with its higher-value tariffs over $80 growing in popularity and now accounting for one quarter of its postpaid plans.

The shift across to Optus is by postpaid subscribers attracted to the telco’s $80+ plan which provides a minimum 6GB to meet consumers’ ever increasing demand for more data.

And, Kantar says new Optus customers claimed to have left their old network because the cost was either too high or the plan did not offer enough data.

And, in better news for Telstra, in contrast to last quarter, where Kantar saw a fairly flat share performance in postpaid for the big telco, March 2016 sees Telstra’s share increase by 1.2% points to 43.6%, with the promise of better network coverage influencing customers to switch from Vodafone and Optus.

In addition to strong acquisitions, loyalty among existing Telstra customers is high at 92.5%, according to Kantar, and, among the majors, Telstra boasts the highest Net Promoter Score of 13 against a market average of 6 - and higher still at 16 in postpaid, where customers are very likely to recommend their carrier.

In prepaid, Kantar observes that the market made up 33% of mobile customers in March 2016. Having traditionally been a relatively weaker market for Telstra in share terms, Kantar says the latest period shows strong share growth continuing for the carrier so that share of prepaid is now not too dissimilar to that of postpaid.

Monthly Average Revenue Per User – or ARPU - remains higher than average and grows to $36 for Telstra with the $40 plan, in particular, taking an increasing share – offering 3GB of data plus, for a limited time, 3GB of bonus “night” data.

And, Amaysim and the mobile virtual network operators (MVNO’s) running on the Telstra network - Aldi Mobile and Boost - also continue to gain share of prepaid, according to Kantar, with their data inclusions increasing as they continue to drive usage of services such as streaming and, at the same time, offer value for money.