Here is an update on my mobile situation.

Here in Australia I will use the GlobalGossip simcard as my primary number. You can reach me at 04145 34340 respectively +61 41 45 34340.
This gives me really cheap rates for calling and texting. 9 aussie cents for german landline, 30 for german mobile, 15 cents for a text message to anywhere in the world 🙂

I have my german simcard in my old phone. I can receive texts for free, so for germans texting me – use my known german number, but don’t try to call me on that, as I won’t answer. The roaming coasts are too high.

Yesterday I got a third simcard from Telstra for mobile internet which goes into my laptop. Telstra wouldn’t give me a postpaid plan because I’m not an australian resident for at least 4 years, which sucks. Not even the casual plan that I could resign from any month.
So I’m now on a prepaid plan, which is much more expensive. The mobile plans here are much more complicated anyway, no easy and cheap “choose the flatrates you like” system as I am used to. In fact, they don’t even have/know about flatrates. Everything is either time or volume based. Feels like stone age here!

For 3GB of data I would “only” pay 29$ postpaid, but now have to pay 49$ prepaid. Fortunately I get additional data amounts with the recharge, which makes it less of a pain. The costs for everything with my Telstra card are horrible by default, you can improve them by buying special packs, like a “browsing pack plus” for mobile internet data, a “text pack” for cheaper text messages and so on.

But that’s not all, to make it more complex, there are 2 types of credit. The actual amount of money you recharge with can be used to buy one or several of these packs. Additionally, you get a “Cap” credit. E.g. for a recharge of 30$AUS I get a cap of 220$CAP that can be used for calls and texts. Highly confusing! In the end that makes things not as expensive as they seem to be at first glance, but the whole system sucks!

They should really try to learn from german providers like BASE.

The Telstra homepage is similarly complex and as hard to get through as their plans. So all in all, Telstra really sucks, but it’s the biggest provider here with the best and fastest network, and I’m glad it’s working for me now. I only had to wait 24hours with creating the online account I need to manage everything, because their website was “experiencing delays”. Biggest provider in Aus and they cannot even fix bugs in their website in time. “Come back in 24 hours” is a real NoGo in the IT business I come from.

Oh, by the way, the Telstra lady in the shop registered me as “Phillip Hubner”. Apparently she couldn’t read properly, my passport clearly stated “Philipp Huebner” 😀 I had to guess how she spelled me to create my online account, took me a few tries to find the right wrong spelling 😉
Luckily I could correct my name once I had opened the account.

Okay, enough bashing Telstra, here are further notes from Sydney:

  • After 9 days I still don’t have my atm card from Westpac, which I really need, I’m leaving Sydney soon and am not coming back :S
  • There’s heaps of free WiFi spots around everywhere in the Sydney, which is really cool.
  • The whole city and especially the parks are extremely clean, which I find impressive, given the amount of people living here. There is simply no dirt, waste, trash … lying around. Very nice!
  • Everything here is wheelchair accessible. This is great for disabled persons, unfortunately they often don’t have steps for the not disabled, so I have to walk decent detours (e.g. inside museums) to get a storey up or down. Oh well, I think I can keep up with that 😉
  • While they take good care of people in wheelchairs, it must be really hard for blind people. I already told you about the ****** traffic lights here. I don’t know how blind people can do it, but I have misjudged the sounds of the traffic lights hundreds of times by now, meaning the other direction got green, not mine, and I almost stepped into the accelerating cars. Maybe there’s some hidden logic, but to me and the other Germans here it seems like gambling, a 50% chance not to be run over by a car each time 😀 because the sound doesn’t come from the other side of the street but the place where you are standing.
    Oh, sometimes all cars have red and all pedestrians green. The lights here really do as they please ^^
  • Tonight the most philippish (a word invention from Erin and Samira, meaning funky lights) event in the world is going to happen here and Sydney 🙂 see vividsydney.com for details, I will blog about it once I got heaps of awesome photos 😀