Months after saying it wouldn’t increase prices in July, Telstra has announced the cost of its mobile plans will increase in August.
In a statement to the share market this morning, the telco didn’t say exactly how much each plan would increase by, only that the rises across most of its offerings would be by between $2 and $4 a month.
The hikes will come into effect on August 27 for post-paid customers and October 22 for pre-paid users.
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The announcement comes after Telstra said in March, when it cut 2800 jobs in a move to save $350 million, that it would not slug customers with higher costs in July as it scrapped its inflation-linked price indexation.
“We will not be making a CPI-linked annual price change to post-paid mobile prices in July 2024,” CEO Vicki Brady said at the time.
“We will continue to review our pricing and any changes will be communicated to customers in a timely and transparent way.”
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In announcing next month’s price increases, Telstra said it had taken high living costs into account, and pointed to the removal of the CPI-linked price changes.
“This change simplified Telstra’s pricing approach to be more consistent across its products and services, reflected there are a range of factors that go into any pricing decision and provided greater flexibility to adjust prices at different times and across different plans based on their value propositions and customer needs,” it said in its statement.
“In making these price changes, Telstra has balanced cost of living pressures it knows some of its customers are experiencing, with its need to continue to invest to manage technology evolution and continued strong customer demand on its mobile network.”
Telstra is Australia’s largest mobile network, with about 22.5 retail services on its network.
It posted an after-tax profit of $2.1 billion last year.
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