Better Life Mobile phone plans

Better Life Mobile offers prepaid plans with a focus on providing services to those on lower incomes.

When it launched in November 2015, Better Life Mobile became the first telco to achieve B Corp status within Australia. Administered by the non-profit organisation B Lab, the B Corp label identifies companies that meet specific standards of social, environmental and ethical responsibility through initiatives such as environmental sustainability and charitable donations. Better Life Mobile achieves this by using a portion of its profits to supply the homeless and low-income earners with free phones and phone credit, as well as working with welfare organisations to help those in financial disarray.

As part of its community focus, Better Life Mobile offers low-cost, SIM-only mobile plans on commitment-free, month-to-month contracts, with no excess usage fees or other hidden costs to catch you unawares. These plans make use of parts of Telstra's 3G and 4G network and cover 98.8% of the Australian population.

Better Life Mobile prepaid plans

Four plans comprise Better Life Mobile's SIM-only offerings. Each plan comes with unlimited standard calls and texts to landlines and mobiles anywhere within Australia. There are no lock-in contracts either, so you don't have to worry about cancellation fees if you want to end your service or change provider at any point.

The only key differentiator between the plans is their monthly data caps. Here's how they shake out:

• S plan: 1.5GB of data for $18 a month
• M plan: 3.5GB of data for $25 a month
• L plan: 6GB of data for $29 a month
• XL plan: 9GB of data for $35 a month

Better Life Mobile also offers a data-only plan for those who do all their communication online. For $88, you'll get 12GB of data to use over a period of 180 days.

If you're looking to chat with friends or family overseas, each of Better Life Mobile's mobile plans can be upgraded with an international call pack bolt-on. For $10 extra a month, this gets you 120 minutes' worth of calls to the following 50 countries:

Fixed line

American Samoa, Andorra, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, France, French Guinea, Germany, Greece, Guam, Guantanamo, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA, Venezuela, Vietnam and Virgin Islands.

Mobile

American Samoa, Bangladesh, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom and Vietnam.

In keeping with its goal of transparency, Better Life Mobile doesn't automatically charge you for excess data if you use up all your monthly allowance. Instead, your Internet service will be suspended and your monthly bill will remain free of nasty excess usage fees. If you can't wait until the end of the month for your cap to reset, you can purchase additional data in 1GB chunks for $10 each.

How does Better Life Mobile compare?

Better Life Mobile's focus on simple and affordable mobile plans places it in an increasingly-competitive crowd, with budget telcos like amaysim and Vaya offering more data at a cheaper rate. The caveat there is that most of Better Life Mobile's competition operates on the Optus 4G network rather than Telstra's, which means slightly less coverage and lower 4G speeds, depending on where you live.

Here's how Better Life Mobile stacks up against the competition at the low end of the budget spectrum:

It's a similar story at the top tier of budget plans, with Moose Mobile, amaysim and Vaya all offering higher data caps at comparable prices. You also have options from ALDImobile and Lycamobile if you're dead set on using Telstra's network over Optus:

Why should you consider Better Life Mobile?

For those on a strict budget who can't afford to be blindsided by hidden fees, Better Life Mobile offers simple and affordable mobile plans with no contractual obligations to tie you down. Unlimited calls and generous data inclusions mean you don't have to sacrifice connectivity for value either, and with Telstra 4G powering Better Life Mobile's plans, you get access to the speediest and most accessible mobile network in Australia.

Then there are the indirect benefits. By signing up with Better Life Mobile, you'll be supporting its community initiatives and making it easier for the less-fortunate to get access to the telecommunications services we so often take for granted.

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