Australian law requires telcos to publish a Critical Information Summary, or CIS, for their plans. It is not marketing. It is the document that states the price, the term, the inclusions, the exclusions and the exit conditions in a form you are meant to read before you buy. If a plan is sold to you without one, that is a question worth asking.
What a CIS has to cover
- The service description, in enough detail to know what you are actually buying.
- Pricing: the upfront cost, the minimum monthly charge, and the per-unit excess rates.
- The minimum term and what terminating early costs.
- What is included and, just as importantly, what is excluded.
- The fair use policy and the complaint and ombudsman path.
The line most people skip
It is the exclusions paragraph. On the TPG Mobile SIM only plan, the exclusions run to excess data, calls to international numbers, SMS and MMS to international numbers, calls to satellite phones, third party content, video calls, international roaming, directory assistance and other enhanced services. Reading only the included data figure gives you a plan that does not behave the way the headline implies.
Where to find it
Each provider publishes its own, usually as a PDF linked from the plan page. The provider that sells you the plan is the one whose document binds you. A comparison site quoting a plan from a different provider is quoting a different contract.
On this site we cite the CIS of the provider for every figure we publish, and link the archived text so you can check the wording we relied on.
What we could not verify. Where a provider has not published a figure we mark it unknown rather than estimate it. Re-read the provider page linked below on the day you decide.