Capped Plans
The concept behind capped mobile phone plans is that you are charged a minimum amount per month, called the cap price even if your usage of services during the month falls below the cap value. The cap value is the value of services that one can use without being charged more for the monthly cap price paid by you. If your usage is more than the cap value, then in that case you are billed for the difference in addition to the minimum cap value. Generally, the services that you can use within your cap value is domestic calls, messages, both text and picture, video calls, voice mail, etc. International calls are not allowed under the capped plans by most providers.
The cap plans are very popular among people of Australia these days and all the major companies are offering different plans as their business strategy to attract customers. For instance, Vodafone, Telstra, Virgin and Optus all have a number of caps to suit different customer needs. Some have their cap plans for GSM phones, while others have it only for 3G networks. There are some web sites that compare the cap plans offered by different providers in terms of cost and services offered so that consumers can select the best among them.
Most cap plans lock-in a price for some period of time with the result that customers may miss lower rates and better deals in the future till the time they are required to be in the contract. It also prevents users to switch over to a different plan if their usage pattern has changed with time during the period of contract. The customers should carefully check what are the services included in the plan so that they do not get a bill shock at the end of the month.