Aldi mobile phone card review

With mobile data and phone coverage still a big issue in Australia, especially for the traveller, I was intrigued by the latest offering from Aldi into the world of mobiles. The most interesting part of there offering to me was there partnership with Telstra, and there 3G network. So with this in mind and the fact that I needed a cheap sim to test my new pocket wifi I thought it might be helpful to post my findings.

As with all of these pay as you go deals it is best to read there information for yourselves before committing.

The initial setup is as follows.

The starter pack costs $5 this gives you a SIM card of your choice, with $5 worth of credit which is valid for 365 days. The system work on a voucher system which at a minimum is $15 for $15 credit over 365 days, once this has been added you can purchase a data add on voucher $15 for 2 gig of data to use in a 30 days. This is very interesting as Telstra is very expensive for data rates for prepaid, there option is about twice the price. There are other voucher options which can be purchased either online or in store, so checkout there website for full details.

Once you get a starter pack you need to register it, I did mine online at there website aldimobile.com.au they required the usual personal information but added drivers licence and Medicare card, also they don’t register to postboxes, there is no need to enter credit card details either. They also seem to limit a person to 5 cards. After submitting my information they said that the sim should be active within 4 hours, I received an email within 30 minutes saying I was ready to go.

This was all straight forward but a couple of points to note, they don’t offer overseas roaming so not good if you are planning an overseas trip, and they are looking like only Australian citizens can activate an account so if you are holidaying in Australia from overseas this card seems unavailable to you unless you have Aussie friends to activate it for you.

So now with the card activated and installed in my pocket wifi I was ready for some speed testing, would I really have the power and coverage of the Telstra 3G network. To conduct my speed test I was using the speed test app on my iPhone connected over wifi to the pocket wifi.

My initial test results were very good. Ping 99ms / Download 5.11 Mbs / Upload 1.56 Mbs, as a comparison the results from a speed test from my iPhone over the virgin 3G network (Optus carrier) was Ping 68ms / Download 3.40Mbs / Upload 0.82 Mbs

All in all this seems on the face of it to be a great way to get a cheap pay as you go phone card with reasonable cheap data costs, and all on Telstra who have best coverage in Australia, so if you are in the market for a new phone card, this could be perfect for you.

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