The latest shot in Australia’s mobile price war has been fired — and it’s not a good one for Telstra and Optus.

Mobile telco VHA has more than doubled the data download quota included with most of its mobile phone capped plans offered by both its Vodafone and 3 brands — boosting limits by a gigabyte or more in some cases.

For example, customers on VHA’s $29 consumer capped plan used to have just 50MB of quota included — now they get 200MB. Those on a $49 plan now get 1.5GB, up from 50MB, while those on the $59 and $79 plans now receive 2G of quota — up from 750MB and 1GB respectively. It’s a similar case when it comes to VHA’s business, combo, unlimited and month to month (SIM-only) plans.

“Vodafone and 3 customers now get a whole lot more for their money,” said John Casey, VHA’s director of marketing. “Our customers affinity with mobile internet and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is growing day by day, so we’re meeting that demand by increasing the data in our caps.”

Casey said Apple’s iPhone 4 device was “very hot right now”, and described the rival Android mobile operating system as “the next big thing in mobile phones”.

VHA will also offer a promotional $59 plan included an iPhone 4 or Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 handset for nothing up-front. The plan is effectively a $10 per month discount off the $69 plan as a special offer.

VHA’s research shows that consumers are increasingly using mobile internet and 3G services — for example, as at 30 June this year, 2.3 million Australians were using mobile broadband or 3G services on their handsets — a number up by 150.2 percent compared with June 2009.

The news comes as last week the Australian Communications and Media Authority released a report which it said showed that smartphones were expected to drive “significant future growth” in mobile communications and unlock “major opportunities” in Australia’s digital economy.

“Digital technologies are really starting to have an enormous effect on the interactivity of individuals and organisations that now communicate using multiple forms of media in environments that are mobile, fast, and virtual,” said ACMA chairman, Chris Chapman, at the time.

Image credit: VHA

Related posts:

1. Vodafone boosts mobile broadband data caps
2. Telstra doubles bundled data quotas
3. Telstra boosts iPhone, Desire + N97 mini data caps
4. VHA cuts prepaid mobile broadband prices
5. Virgin Mobile releases iPhone 4 plans

1. PointZeroOne
   Posted 30/08/2010 at 1:55 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I’m paying an extra $10 a month for another 1Gb of data ontop of the 500mb that comes with my current cap plan.

   Have contacted Voda and they say they’ve put me on the new data amount. So I should have 2.5Gb now, but the part of the site that I can check this hasn’t updated yet.

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 30/08/2010 at 2:29 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Yes but the question is will you be able to use all of that data with the crappy coverage that Optus and VHA offer :) I find I am using a lot more data now that I am on Telstra :)

     • PointZeroOne
       Posted 30/08/2010 at 4:23 pm | Permalink | Reply

       Well where I work I get full coverage and on the train I get coverage for the whole trip except for about 5min while we pass through a black spot.

       So that is when I’d use the data the most.

       Also I’ve just discovered that my phone has HTC Flash on it, so using the default web browser I can check flash stuffs out, so my quota will be hit by that a bit as well.