Reminder: Telstra’s free data day is this Sunday
Telstra mobile customers affected by the 17 March outage can use as much data as they like this upcoming Sunday.
It’s been a rough ride for Telstra over the past couple of months, with multiple service outages; the most recent nationwide outage on 17 March saw the telco apologise (again) and offer up a "free data day" (again) during which any data-related activity on a Telstra mobile service won’t count towards user quota in any way at all. When announced it was a couple of weeks after the outage, but that time has passed. This Sunday, 3 April is the day in question.
Sounds good: What’s the catch?
Telstra hasn’t made any other announcements about other forms of compensation in relation to the 17 March outage, so this may be as good as it gets. It’s worth noting that the fact that this is the second free data day that Telstra’s offered up in just a couple of months means that it’s quite likely that some users will flood the mobile system with usage requests, so while it’s free, it may not necessarily be fast.
I’m with a Telstra MVNO. Do I get free data?
You certainly should get free data on Telstra MVNOs, including Boost, ALDIMobile and Woolworths Mobile. Telstra specifically namechecks Boost in their outage FAQ, and Woolworths and ALDI are both prominently displaying messages indicating that they’re passing the free data along to their customers.
The one quirk with the MVNOs is that they’re offering free data specifically from 12AM AEDT 3 April through to 3am AEDT 4 April, whereas Telstra’s statement is that the deal runs midnight to midnight within each local time zone.
ALDIMobile’s statement to this effect reads:
"The free data on Sunday will apply from 12am AEDT Sunday 3rd April morning until 3am AEDT Monday morning, this will allow for our customers in WA to also enjoy free data until midnight on Sunday local time in WA."
While Woolworths Mobile simply states:
"To apologise for the network outage on 17 March, we are offering our mobile customers a day of free mobile data on Sunday 3 April 2016. We are not placing any restrictions on the amount of mobile data customers can use on this date. The free data will apply from 12am AEDT Sunday 3 April 2016 to 3am AEST Monday 4 April 2016."
Telstra is providing the same number of overall hours of coverage, because it’s got to start the day at midnight on Saturday in the Eastern states, but its statement on when it’s free suggests you only get free data for 24 hours, or 25 if you’re in a state where the clocks roll back an hour. Comparatively speaking, as advertised MVNO customers get a hefty 27 hours of free data coverage as long as they’re willing to start and conclude downloading in the witching hours and live with 3G data speeds only.
Picture: TK Kurikawa / Shutterstock.com
