Telstra announces sweeping new price hike - here's how it will affect you

Telstra customers are set to pay more for mobile plans after the telco giant announced price hikes.

The change will come in for postpaid customers from August 27 this year, while the change will affect prepaid customers from October 22.

Customers will be paying between $2-4 more per month, with premium plans set to have the highest price jump from $95 per month to $99 per month, Telstra Consumer Group Executive Brad Whitcomb said.

Basic plans will rise from $62 to $65, essential plans will rise from $72 to $75, and bundle plans will increase from $50 to $52.

Starter plan prices will remain unaffected by the price hikes, however, with the monthly rate holding stead at $50.

Data allowances for starter plans will also increase from 2GB per month to 5GB per month for use in Australia, while speed caps will be removed from starter and basic plans for use in Australia.

The Large Data Plan has been scrapped in the changes, and won't be available for purchase from August 27.

However, existing customers will be able to remain on the plan 'until further notice'.

The Telstra Top Up program will also increase its free prepaid recharge from October 22 from $160 to $180 with 70GB of data.

It comes after the telco announced in May 2024 that they were switching from their CPI-linked annual pricing review.

The change 'simplified (Telstra's) pricing approach to be more consistent across (their) products and services', Telstra said in a statement.

'These price changes help us to keep investing in mobile coverage, performance and local support, as well as ongoing investments to improve the security of our services,' the statement read.

'We monitor our network 24/7 to help protect against scams by blocking malicious calls and texts from reaching you.

'It takes a lot of work and cost to run a mobile network as large as ours, and even more to support the increased usage we have seen on our network.'