TPG jacks up data inclusions and ditches SIM and MMS fees

TPG has announced it has boosted its data inclusions by 65 percent and done away with fees for SIM purchasing and sending MMS messages.

After six-month introductory pricing is complete, users will pay AU$20 for 4GB of data a month; AU$30 each month will see users have 10GB; AU$35 per month gives 15GB; and AU$40 a month has 20GB of data included. All plans over the AU$30 mark include 100 international minutes each month.

Chief operating officer Craig Levy said the company has also removed the SIM purchase fee that has been in place since 2008.

"We looked at our data and identified that a percentage of would-be buyers are hesitant to purchase our mobile service because of our SIM fee and that our plans didn't include unlimited national MMS," he said.

"Our new plans have addressed these two shortfalls in addition to giving customers much more data which make us very aggressively positioned against the leading discount mobile providers in Australia."

At the present time, TPG is still a Vodafone virtual operator, while the company builds out its own mobile network.

"We will be even more aggressive when our own mobile network is ready," Levy said.

In September, TPG said the AU$1.9 billion build-out would be complete in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra by mid-2018.

"TPG's strategy is to deploy a primary small cell network across metropolitan areas, complemented by a traditional macro network," the company said in its FY17 financial results presentation.

"TPG has entered into agreements with multiple partners across Australia to be used for both the small cell and macro network providing a significant number of sites to cover major metropolitan areas.

"A higher density of small cell sites will be used for the initial 4G LTE rollout, and will also provide key infrastructure assets for the longer-term 5G evolution."

TPG said at the time it intends to utilise both its 700MHz and 2600MHz spectrum holdings, as well as its fibre assets.

Last month, the company said it had installed sites in Sydney and Melbourne.

During 2015, TPG shifted its mobile customers to Vodafone, and the two companies signed a AU$900 million deal that would see TPG construct 4,000 kilometres of fibre to Vodafone's cell towers across the country.

Speaking in Sydney last week, Australian telecommunications entrepreneur Bevan Slattery said TPG will become the second-largest carrier in Australia within five years, by going for the bottom 20 percent of the market.

"I think they're going to launch a Jio-style service ... it'll be unlimited internet for like AU$30," Slattery said.

"I think the rollout's going to cost [500 million to] 700 million, something like that. But they've already got the fibre in place, they've already got submarine cable capacity in place ... I think the capex requirement of that is probably overblown, and the only thing they need to really do is start strapping gear onto the end of the fibre."

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