In Sunday's segment on Sky News Australia (Weekend Edition with Tim Gilbert) we looked at mobile coverage for Easter road trips. A cheap city plan may leave many travellers out of range on bush roads. This is where area coverage not population coverage matters. Australia is 7.7 million km² and Telstra covers 2.6 million km² - one million more than nearest rival Optus.

Clearly Telstra offers more coverage but you don’t need a Telstra account to take advantage of that wider service area. There’s a simple ‘hack’ without leaving your current provider that works fine in city areas. And that ‘hack’ is buying a Boost pre-paid sim. Boost is the only MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that has access to Telstra’s entire network, excluding 5G which isn’t relevant in this discussion.

If you are already with Telstra you can get devices to boost coverage but you’re looking at another thousand dollars. I tested the CEL-FI Go on the fringe of Telstra’s network last year and it works. A quick look at coverage maps will show you there are still plenty of gaps out there so if you’re going off the main roads - take into account your mobile phone coverage. Or .. get a satellite phone.