Tangerine Telecom mobile review

If you visit the Tangerine Telecom homepage, you’re greeted by a company that’s clearly an NBN provider first and a telco second. Most of the its homepage is dedicated to the provider's broadband offering rather than mobile one. There's even a button that lets you add a SIM Only plan built in to the provider's NBN sign-up process.

All this paints a pretty clear picture of how the provider approaches the mobile market. Tangerine’s approach to being a telco is to provide lean SIM Only plans with little in the way of perks (more on that below).

Tangerine’s cheapest options is the 12GB SIM Only plan, which costs $23 a month and comes with 12GB of 4G data.

That’s a decent price for unlimited standard national talk and text, though a small amount of providers are usually cheaper and offer the same amount of data or more. For comparison, here’s how that particular Tangerine plan stacks up against Dodo, Spintel, Kogan and other telcos competing over budget SIM Only plans.

Tangerine’s main perk is that it operates on the speedy, far-reaching Telstra wholesale network. It’s not as ubiquitous as Telstra’s main network, but it still reaches an impressive 98.8% of the Australian population.

Tangerine offers six SIM Only plans and, starting with the 25GB SIM Only plan, you also get unlimited calls to mobiles and landlines in 15 selected countries:

The more you spend on a SIM Only plan with Tangerine, the better the dollars-to-data value gets. While the 12GB SIM Only plan translates to $1.92 per gigabyte, the 150GB SIM Only plan costs $58 a month, which means you’re paying a thrifty 39 cents per gigabyte.

That Tangerine price is not towards the bottom when you stack it next to competitors that currently offer at least 120GB of monthly SIM Only data.

Yes, Tangerine customers on the 25GB plan or higher can get access to 5G, but there's also a some restrictions.

Tangerine's access to Telstra's 4G and 5G networks is also speed-capped: the 12GB plan at 100Mbps, the 25GB to 80GB plans at 150Mbps and the 150GB at 250Mbps depending on the plan.

Tangerine previously took a hammer to its roster of international roaming options. The provider offers three travel-oriented add-ons aimed at customers looking to keep in touch while they wander abroad, and those overhauled add-ons are now much better value.

Tangerine's travel packs are as follows:

• $60 for 3GB of data, 300 mins of talk, 300 texts with 3-day expiry
• $35 for 5GB of data, 30 mins of talk, 30 texts with 7-day expiry
• $55 for 10GB, 60 mins of talk, 60 texts with a 14-day expiry

Tangerine roaming is supported in a total of 68 different destinations. You can find the full list available on the Tangerine website.

Part of the initial vision behind Tangerine's creation was the belief that customers would switch if a new provider offered better service. While customer support options are more comprehensive for Tangerine NBN—especially with the zero-risk 14-day trial—Tangerine mobile customers still have access to support through forums, Facebook, phone support, or online self-help.

However, when it comes to customer satisfaction for Tangerine's SIM-only plans, the numbers tell a different story. On Product Review, Tangerine’s SIM-only plans have an average rating of 3 out of 5 from 63 reviews, and Trustpilot ratings have dropped to 2.2 from 4.1 previously. These figures indicate a noticeable dip compared to its previous customer service, with user reviews highlighting a good experience for NBN (4.2 out of 5 on Product Review for NBN) and more mixed experience for mobile customers. Despite the lower ratings for SIM-only plans, Tangerine continues to offer competitive pricing, but the satisfaction levels don't quite match up to those of higher-rated providers like Moose Mobile and Numobile.

First things first, head over to the SIM Only portion of the Tangerine website. Select a plan, then follow the prompts after you’ve hit ‘Order Now’ at the bottom of the page. You’ll need to register for an account with an email address before finalising your SIM Only order.

You can see all Tangerine SIM Only plans below.