Hello Australian chums - and of course, congratulations on your win today at Lords.

At the end of the month me and the family are travelling to the West coast for 3 weeks to see family. Mainly spending out time in Broome, but we’ve got a 4x4 some small (carefully prepared, cautious) trips into more rural areas.

Our cellular UK provider’s rates for using phones is ruinously expensive, so I’m looking for advice on

  1. Which cellular provider you would recommend to get a - presumably pre-paid SIM while we are out there. Main criteria are

  2. Probably want about 4-8Gigs data, mainly calls within Australia with probably about 3 hours of calling back to the UK during this period on one phone.

  3. Anyone know whether it is possible to get the SIMs before we travel in the UK? Or best to get them in Oz? and if the latter - best place to get them?

Sorry for the shopping list of questions. Any advice gratefully received.

    •  abhibeckert   ( @abhibeckert@beehaw.org ) 
      2•8 months ago

      No worries - I figured it was already too late but since it’s one of the top comments here, I wanted to reply. Also lots of other people will have the same question as you and maybe find my answer. :-)

      For anyone else reading this… Even though Boost uses the Telstra network, their customers can’t connect to the entire network and it’s particularly noticeable once you leave the south east coast of Australia (also, in major cities Telstra provides faster service than Boost).

      Here’s a 2023 coverage map comparing the two (the purple sections are up to 6Gbps coverage, won’t get that anywhere on Boost):

      I’m glad you had a satellite beacon. They’ve saved a friend of mine once, hit the button and a helicopter was hovering above us 45 minutes later (it would have been risky to land where we were - they used a UHF to tell us where they were going to land). One of those things you’ll hopefully never use but be glad you’ll have one if you do need it.