> using a stolen SIM card to download almost $200,000 worth of data from the internet.
What does '$200k worth' of Telstra data look like anyway?
If you're prepaying at the highest levels[1], it's $1.50/GB up to 10GB. If it was this, she must have downloaded a little over 130TB of data or been subject to one hell of an overage charge. Seems unlikely.
If you're using their 'extreme usage' standard plan[2], it's $5/GB up to 120GB, which may well be enough for dozens of movies. That plan is $600/mo or $15k over 2 years. Which means she's being accused of stealing over two decades' worth of their highest consumer data tier.
Either something's up with Telstra's corporate data rates or there are some incredibly customer-hostile penalties attached to these things.
Telstra almost certainly has a special deal with the power company--extremely low per-device rates for consistent very low bandwidth usage. They have a ton of these power meters out there and they don't exactly need a multi-gigabyte network plan.
Those overages are as high as they are because they're a deterrent from the power company from fielding broken hardware that uses more bandwidth than it should.
I assumed there must be some kind of special deal going on but the shape of it eluded me. This sounds reasonable. It also suggests the idea of bug/theft insurance for corporate hardware use - pay a little extra and maybe we'll alert you when your power meters develop a hunger for torrents.
Come to think of it, shouldn't Aurora have noticed a meter dropping off the grid and taken action to shut down that data account?
What does '$200k worth' of Telstra data look like anyway?
If you're prepaying at the highest levels[1], it's $1.50/GB up to 10GB. If it was this, she must have downloaded a little over 130TB of data or been subject to one hell of an overage charge. Seems unlikely.
If you're using their 'extreme usage' standard plan[2], it's $5/GB up to 120GB, which may well be enough for dozens of movies. That plan is $600/mo or $15k over 2 years. Which means she's being accused of stealing over two decades' worth of their highest consumer data tier.
Either something's up with Telstra's corporate data rates or there are some incredibly customer-hostile penalties attached to these things.
[1] http://www.telstra.com.au/bigpond-internet/mobile-broadband/... [2] http://www.telstrabusiness.com/business/portal/online/site/p...