Cell phone (prepaid?) in Australia

NP

So, my brother is going to be in Melbourne, Australia for about 6 months or so, and since he's basically clueless, he asked me to help him with picking a cell phone plan for him to use while he's there. I was thinking prepaid would be the way to go, since he probably can't sign a contract for that short a period of time. What's the best/cheapest service that he can use while he's over there? He will need to get a phone too, since he currently doesn't have a GSM phone.

glimlie

I think he might be out of luck for such a short period with regards to a plan like you said. It might actually depend on his visa- if hes a student then he might be able to sign a contract really - i cant be sure.
I think the easiest way though, is to just walk into any one of the many phone companies we have here and just ask to buy a cheap phone and go pre-paid. Phone might set you back around 150$ and then pay as you go.

theSquid

I got a nice pre-paid phone off of Optus for $230. LG Cookie is what it's called in America, it's called the KP 500 over here, got a touch screen, all the essentials. Optus also have a $30 pre-paid plan which gives you something like $30 of calls, $120 of texts, and $150 of web access... for a month, then you lose everything except for what you had left on your call credit or something, idno.

desperaterobots

He just needs a prepaid phone, preferrably one of the uber-value ones, along the lines of $49 gets $300 worth of calls, that kind of thing. You can usually just get a sim card if you have a quad-band phone already, it should work here. Otherwise, a cheap phone will set you back between $50-$150, depending on what sales might be on at the time. He can stroll into a petrol station and pick up a prepaid sim, possibly even a phone, and activate it over the phone. Or, you know, a virgin/optus/3/telstra/vodafone store.