Parents can easily keep their child's mobile phone costs down if they stick one simple method — prepaid deals — experts say.
The introduction of data alerts at 50 per cent, 80 per cent and 100 per cent of plans has helped curb bill shock but many parents are still shelling out significant amounts each month to keep their kids connected.
New analysis by Pure Profile on behalf of Amaysim surveyed 1000 people with children aged 12-18 who use mobile phones and found parents spend the following on their child's phone deals:
Switch telcos and save yourself hundreds of dollars a year
Telco comparison website WhistleOut's spokesman, Kenny McGilvary, said it can be a hefty charge if kids exceed their monthly data usage, so prepaid deals are a good way "get certainty and not blow the budget each month."
"Most of the carriers charge $10 per extra gigabyte once you go over your monthly allocation," he said.
Mr McGilvary said the average data usage per month is 2.5-3 gigabytes.
But he warned scrolling social networking sites such as Instagram and watching videos "could result in a good chance of going over your data."
Mother Anya Hart, 41, said the way she avoids her 12-year-old daughter Charlotte running up bills is by including her in her husband's plan allowing them to share 37 gigabytes per month for $130.
"We are on my husband's contract and he manages our usage through his iPhone, we can check at any time how much data we are using," she said.
She said this works well for them rather than having individual phone plans and potentially going over monthly limits.
