If you’re forced to work from home and realty on your mobile’s data connection, you might get a boost of data courtesy of your telco.
There’s a little dose of good news for some customers displaced by the COVID-19 coronavirus situation forced to work from home, because if your internet connection isn’t quite the best in the world and you rely on mobile to make it through, you might be getting a bit more data to help you get there.
It’s a little thing Optus is doing for its mobile customers, supporting with extra gigabytes dependent on what service you use and how you spend, adding a one-off boost of download bandwidth to your mobile usage. You could theoretically use it to spend on the company’s recent 5G network if you’re in reach, or you could just use it however you want, but to use it, you’ll need to get it first, and that differs dependent on the Optus customer you might be.
If you’re an eligible postpaid mobile subscriber, Optus advises that you’ll receive a one-off 20GB in April 2020, while eligible prepaid customers will need to recharge with $40 or more in April to receive 10GB of extra data in a one-off release.
“These are unprecedented times, and we want to help Australians who find themselves having to self-isolate or work from home to stay connected,” said Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, designate to the position of CEO at Optus, now that Allan Lew has stepped down.
“We understand how much it means to customers to stay connected with their colleagues, classmates, family and friends,” she said. “Access to data is critical, so we are playing our part in helping the community with our additional data offer.”
Optus hasn’t said what will make postpaid Optus customers eligible for the extra 20GB, but we’re checking with the company to find out what that means. Presumably, any current and paid Optus subscriber should be eligible to receive that extra 20GB in April, which according the the company, will be made available as an offer in the My Optus app for phones and tablets by March 20.
UPDATE: We reached out to Optus to find out what “eligible” meant for its customers receiving the free data, and were told that “Information will be available through the My Optus App by Friday 20 March 2020”.
