The Great Mobile Plan Shuffle: Why Loyalty Doesn't Pay in Australian Telco

There’s a thread doing the rounds on r/AussieFrugal about ALDI Mobile axing its cheap plans, and it’s got that familiar energy of people trading spreadsheets in the comments like it’s a competitive sport. The $23 plan is going, the family plans are going up, and everyone’s suddenly become an expert on the difference between Telstra’s wholesale network and its retail one. I read the whole thing with my coffee going cold, partly out of genuine interest and partly because I realised I hadn’t checked my own phone plan in about three years.

That’s the trap, isn’t it. You find a good deal, you set it and forget it, and the whole point of “set and forget” is that you stop paying attention. Which is exactly when the provider quietly reshapes the deal underneath you. ALDI’s not doing anything illegal here. Prices go up, plans get discontinued, that’s business. But there’s something almost admirable about how predictable the pattern is: undercut everyone to build a customer base, then slowly claw the margin back once people are comfortable. Boost, Kogan, Woolworths Mobile, they’ve all done a version of this dance at some point.

What struck me in the comments wasn’t the outrage, there wasn’t much of that, it was the sheer amount of unpaid labour people are doing to keep telcos honest. Someone had built out a full comparison table between More Telecom and Boost, down to megabits per second and data banking rules. Another person mentioned they’d got a $300 Boost plan down to $250 through a cashback site and an Officeworks discount stack. This is a niche hobby, comparing MVNOs against their parent networks like they’re footy tipping, but it’s also exactly the kind of consumer vigilance the market relies on us to do because nobody’s going to do it for us.

I did the same thing myself a few years back with our home internet, back when NBN plans were a genuine minefield of “unlimited” that wasn’t quite unlimited and speeds that were more aspirational than actual. Spent a Sunday afternoon on Whirlpool forums cross-referencing RSPs like I was researching a doctoral thesis, saved about $15 a month. Worth it, I suppose, though there’s a version of me that resents having to do it at all. In a properly functioning market you shouldn’t need a hobbyist’s knowledge of wholesale network access tiers just to avoid getting mildly ripped off on a $30 phone plan.

The bit in the thread that got me thinking more broadly was someone on the Woolworths Everyday Mobile plan getting effectively free mobile service through the 10% shopping discount, only to have Woolworths quietly wind that back too. Every discount economy trick eventually gets found out and closed off. It’s the same story with credit card points, with loyalty programs, with basically anything a company offers to get you in the door. The incentive exists to attract you, not to keep rewarding you once you’ve stopped comparing.

None of this is a crisis. Nobody’s going broke over a $6 mobile plan increase. But it’s a small, telling example of how much background admin has been quietly outsourced to households just to keep basic costs in check, and how much easier that is for people with the time, the internet literacy, and the inclination to sit in a Reddit thread cross-referencing network tiers. Not everyone has that. My mother-in-law is still on a plan from 2019 because nobody’s ever sat her down and shown her Boost exists. That’s not laziness, that’s just not everyone’s idea of a fun Sunday.

I switched providers about a year ago after a similarly tedious research session, and I’ll admit there was a genuine little thrill in getting more data for less money. It’s a small win, but in the current cost-of-living climate, small wins add up, and there’s no shame in being mildly proud of a good deal. I’m going to go check my own plan tonight. It’s probably time.