- I got two mobile phones.
- First phone is my old postpaid phone, downgraded to the lowest Globe plan (P500/month).
- This first phone is used for receiving SMS from the Philippines. Alternatively, ditch your old postpaid sim and get a prepaid like Globe OFW sim pack.
- Second phone is an Optus prepaid phone. This will be used for communicating in Australia AND texting back home. Ironically it costs cheaper to use the Optus sim to text back home.
- For Optus prepaid: the cost is A$30 to recharge (reload) the phone (see "Jargon Watch, below"). This charge (load) could last for about a month.
Before leaving the Philippines, I did some research and asked around for the best way to save on costs of maintaining a mobile phone. The winning strategy? Most advised me to get two sims: a prepaid Globe phone on roaming, and a prepaid sim card in Australia. There's a Globe OFW prepaid sim pack. It has got lots of conveniences on it. For one, the overseas Pinoy doesn't have to reload, so long as someone back home sends a text message to it.
But I simply decided to retain my old postpaid number. To minimize on the monthly overhead, I downgraded my plan to the cheapest level, P500/month.
Why did I choose this? I acquired my first mobile phone around 1999 and haven't changed my phone number. Since then I have accumulated 10 years' worth of contacts. It was going to be a headache to tell all of these people that I would be changing my number for one year.
I did a quick cost-benefit analysis. Cost of retaining my old number using the P500/month rate: P6,000 for one year in Australia. This seemed to be a good price to pay for the knowledge stored in my phone book.
Mobile Phone in Australia
There are three main providers in Australia: Telstra, Optus and 3 (yes, that's "three mobile"). There's also Virgin, but they're small right now. I got Optus prepaid, mainly because back home, Globe customer service advised me to choose Optus because rates are cheaper and both Optus and Globe are owned by SingTel.
The Optus prepaid plans are very confusing though (here they are, in full glory and here is the official Optus list). In the Philippines, there is only one prepaid plan, where credits can be applied to text messaging or voice calls or internet. In Optus, there are about five to seven prepaid plans. Each plan has a different set of quotas for SMS, voice and internet.
Activating the Mobile Phone and/or Sim
This is very important and please follow this carefully before activating your new Australian sim card. When I got my sim pack from Optus, it had a sign that said I needed to activate the sim by calling a number. Do not follow this advice immediately. Instead, go to the Optus website and read the descriptions of the prepaid plans and activate your sim from that website. This will save you from forcing yourself to make a decision quickly over the phone.
Obviously, excited to start using my new Australian sim, I immediately called the activation number. It connected me to an Indian call center. Although the girl was nice, she had a very thick accent that I could not understand.
To make things worst, she was asking me to choose which prepaid plan to use for my phone. I could not even understand the names of the plans she was reading off her script. At the end of it all, I decided to take the Power Up plan, which, upon reading the website later, turned out to give me about A$120 worth of credits.
These credits would be divided into more confusing categories which, upon further investigation, turned out to be allocated for SMS and voice calls with a twist. The twist is that I could register 5 "family" phone numbers (must be Optus too) which I could then call for a big discount. Just explaining all these is already dizzying. Wait till you read the whole Power Up description!
I will write more about why Optus plans are confusing, later. For now, let's just focus on the topic. :)
Jargon Watch
Recharge: load up your sim with credits. Equivalent to "reload" in the Philippines.
Recharge in Philippines means to physically charge the phone battery. "Reload or load" does not mean anything to Australians.
