Hi all
Could someone please explain to me how mobile phone caps work? Can't get it no matter how many sites I check out. I know I must be being really thick here, but some help would be much appreciated

TT xx

I'm, on Vodafone's $49 cap, so each month I pay $49 and I get:
$700 Vodafone to Vodafone credit
$350 Flexi credit, which you use on calls to the other networks and all texts
3GB data

It's pretty good value I reckon. And with my iPhone I can tether the phone to my laptop and enjoy 3GB of mobile broadband

Hi im on virgin big cap $29 a month and get $450 worth of calls, calls and text to other virgin users free includes international calls in the cap
and what ever i dont use gets rolled over to the next month, also as i bought the phone outright no contract cheers Paul

Effectively, the mobile providers provide you with a cap limit, say $500 for which you pay them $50 per month.

For example, say they charge you $1 per minute for calls within Australia and 50c per text. That means from your cap you can have up to 500 mins of calls or 1000 texts or a combination thereof until you reach the cap limit. Once you exceed the cap, then they charge you at those rates.

It's a bit of a pain if you're from the UK as it's not like the way we do our tariffs. Plus, it's marketing at its best/worst! The cap value isn't a real-world value that we recognise; it's a value in the mobile provider's currency (minutes) that let's them try to make people think they're getting $500 worth of stuff for $50.

I'm on TPG for $15 per month. 1Gb data and about $330 cap value (enough for about five hours of calls or 600 texts or combination thereof). TPG is a virtual mobile operator so it uses Optus's network. It's fine for my needs and very cheap.

Hope this helps.

LP.