Australia’s favourite online retailer larrikin is at it again, not just waging war with the prices of electrical goods, but now going after mobile pricing with what appears to be a better deal than any other telco. So what’s the catch?
Launched last night amidst speculation that the company was working with Telstra, Kogan’s mobile service went live, offering a variety of SIM cards – the regular “mini” SIM used by most phones, microSIMs, and even the iPhone 5’s nanoSIM – to match two plans spread out over different needs.
“Australian mobile phone plans have been among the most confusing in the world,” said David Shafer, Kogan’s Executive Director.
“In the rest of the world, customers pay for minutes used or days of service. In Australia, we’re given slogans like, $49 for $500 worth of calls. These are empty slogans that don’t mean anything and are specifically designed to baffle and bewilder the Australian public.”
Three options are available on Kogan for the regular needs of a smartphone – voice, text, and data – with each offering the same thing, just spread out over a different set of time.
Offering unlimited SMS and MMS across Australia, unlimited calls within the country, and 6GB of data per month, the Kogan plan costs either $29 for 30 days, $79 for 90 days, or $299 for the entire year.
People who don’t need the phone service and are content with just data only – useful for tablets – can grab a data-specific plan from Kogan for $10 per month with 2GB included.
There’s no international roaming if you planning on taking your phone on vacation, but outside of this, the plans sound like a good deal, and Kogan is using one of the most reliable telcos in Australia, with Telstra confirmed to be supplying mobile service for the Kogan service.
But therein lies the catch.
While Telstra currently operates a high-speed 4G network capable of reaching in excess of 30-40Mbps download and previously pushed out 3.5G speeds of over 10-20Mbps, Kogan’s use of the Telstra network only offers the barebones basic 3G speed, which even Kogan’s terms cap at around 7.2Mbps.
Even if you have a faster 3G phone – and most of the phones these days are – you won’t pull down speeds higher than this, with most peak speeds sitting around 550kbps to 3Mbps.
That’s not a big problem if you’re not doing a lot of downloading on your mobile device, but if you’re used to speeds past the 5Mbps mark, you won’t find it here.
Where this could work really well, however, is with seniors and kids, groups of people who don’t necessarily need to have the whole of the world wide web downloaded to them immediately, and, like, right now.
With a plan just a hair short of $300 for the year offering unlimited calls, texts, and 6GB data on a slower network, it could suit your grandma, grandpa, teen or pre-teen quite fine, and you won’t have to worry about being one of the numbers in another “bill shock” story put out by the news networks.
Got the Kogan starter pack and already have problems setting up. Not impressed so far.
Kogan Mobile Service is a joke and so is their support. I have tried to use 1800 and 1300 numbers using the starter pack and cannot connect to any of the numbers I have dialled, always get ” the number you have dialled is not available from this service”, I have also used their customer service number and used most of the calls provided free trying to get through, can’t even get through at the adverised starting time. In South Australia the Police contact number is a 13 number service, I have tried calling them and a number of others including emergency road service, all without being able to connect. Anyone wishing to use Kogan take note of this as our mobile phones are often used to connect in an emergency, PLEASE BE WARNED, Kogan is misleading consumers with their promotion of this service.
Don’t bother, it may be cheap but it has non existent service, there is no way to contact them, if you call they wait for a minute then hang up on you, they disconnected my number from my old service and left me without a phone connection for several days now with no resolution in sight and no means of talking to them to resolve it
they sent me the wrong sim card ,they are uncontactable so the service is non existent. avoid them ! Mark
Dont know what part of Telstra network Kogan is using but the service is falling very short of the country towns like mine that already have Telstra coverage! Whether it be next g, 3g or 2g if Telstra is already covering my area successfully why am I not able to use the “so called Telstra 3g” being provided by Kogan????? Also the customer service and despatch department leave a lot to be desired. They sent me the wrong sim and I had to wait for ages before finally receiving the right one only to find out it didn’t work in my town anyway!!! Unless you live in the city or a BIG country town, DONT BOTHER!! I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED to say the least.
SCAM, joined, used 2GB of my 6GB data and they suspended my service and will not return calls or answer the support tickets. Had to switch back. Lost $79 plus time in the process. DON’T USE KOGANMOBILE, SCAM
Kogan mobile works fine for me. My existing number was transferred within a few hours and reception so far is better than Optus. Internet speed is great too, I’ve had a Skype conversation over one hour with the free starter pack and the quality was even better than with my broadband home internet at the time. I cannot complain.
Kogan unlimited isnt what it seems they boot users for making to many calls read the article below
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2070530
Been with Kogan Mobile for 7 months . Only good reports. Yes, their customer service in not very quick in replys. but Its incredibly cheap with good coverage.
I have and will continue to recommend them.
Last month I went over the 6GB limit by 400mb , got an sms saying no charge and try not to do it again. other companies would have charged me a small fortune for going over that much.