Telstra’s budget brand Belong is now offering 5G on all its mobile plans, making it the cheapest option for anyone looking for next-generation connectivity. Belong’s SIM-only mobile plans start at $25 per month with 20GB, while plans with 5G connectivity have typically cost at least $40 per month so far.
There is a catch, however. Belong’s 5G SIM-only plans are capped to speeds of 100Mbps. 5G networks can hit speeds over 1Gbps in ideal conditions, so you’re not going to get the same kind of speed benefit on these plans.
Of course, 100Mbps is still equivalent to what you’d get on an NBN 100 plan, and more than enough for pretty much any mobile activity.
Here’s Belong’s range of SIM-only plans:
And here’s how Belong’s cheapest 5G plan compares to the competition:
5G also has other benefits, such as lower latency and greater efficiency. Customers on a 5G network should experience less congestion than those on a 4G network, for example.
In my testing on a Belong 5G mobile plan, I got download speeds of 102Mbps, upload speeds of 50.3Mbps, and a ping of 15ms. Dropping down to 4G resulted in download speeds of 130Mbps, upload speeds of 33.8Mbps, and a slightly slower ping of 16ms.
5G is available to new and existing Belong customers on all plans. It uses Telstra’s 5G network, which is now available to 80 per cent of the population.
Belong’s mobile broadband plans now have 5G connectivity too. Most of them have the same 100Mbps cap, but the top-end plan will get you speeds up to 250Mbps on 5G and speeds of up to 180Mbps on 4G.
Here are Belong’s mobile broadband plans:
Belong is the first MVNO to introduce 5G connectivity across all its mobile plans.
Alex Choros is Managing Editor at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website.
This article has been updated since it was first published.