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Sources & references
Every coverage, speed, MVNO reach, and pricing claim on SimBuddy links back to a primary or reputable third-party source. The numbers below match the [n] superscripts you'll see across the site.
Section
Network coverage — Telstra, Optus, Vodafone
- 1
Telstra · 2025
Telstra 2025 Annual Report
“Reaches approximately 99.7% of the Australian population and expanded mobile coverage to 3 million square kilometres.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 2
Telstra · 2025
Telstra coverage maps — the facts about how it's measured
“Stand behind the claim of 3 million square kilometres and 99.7% of the Australian population.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 3
ABC News · 2026-03-31
Telstra defends coverage maps following ACMA new rules
“ACMA's new 2026 mobile coverage map rules changed how coverage area is shown — Telstra's mapped area reduced under the new standard.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 4
WhistleOut · 2025
Telstra network coverage vs ALDI, Woolworths, Belong, Boost
“Boost Mobile is the only Telstra MVNO with access to the full Telstra network, including 5G NSA. Other MVNOs use Telstra Wholesale.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 5
Optus · 2025
Optus Living Network — Coverage
“Optus mobile network reaches 98.5% of the Australian population.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 6
Finder · 2025
Telstra vs Optus vs Vodafone — 5G coverage compared
“Optus 5G population coverage is approximately 80.5% as of 2026, still expanding across regional areas.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 7
WhistleOut · 2025
Top phone plans on the Optus network
“Amaysim, Coles Mobile, Catch Connect and others all ride Optus with full retail-speed data.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 8
ACCC · 2025
Mobile Infrastructure Report 2025
“Independent regulator assessment of network coverage, resilience and MVNO competition across Telstra, Optus, and TPG/Vodafone.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 9
Opensignal · 2025-04
Australia Mobile Network Experience Report
“Vodafone's population coverage reaches 98.4% following its Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN) agreement with Optus — access to over 2,000 additional Optus regional sites.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 10
Vodafone Australia · 2025
Vodafone Network — coverage and roaming
“$5 per day roaming in eligible destinations; additional roaming data auto-added at $5/GB when included data is exhausted.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 11
EFTM · 2024-04
TPG, Vodafone and Optus enter regional mobile network-sharing agreement
“11-year MOCN deal expanded TPG/Vodafone's coverage from ~400,000 km² to ~1,000,000 km² using shared Optus regional sites.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10 - 12
Tom's Guide · 2025
Vodafone just more than doubled its network coverage in Australia
“Vodafone's regional coverage expansion under the Optus MOCN agreement is available to Vodafone customers at no extra charge.”
Read source Retrieved 2026-02-10
Data provenance
How SimBuddy gathers, verifies and refreshes its data
The plans, prices, coverage claims and speed benchmarks published on SimBuddy are drawn from a mix of first-party carrier feeds, public regulatory registers, and independent measurement reports. Australian carrier pricing comes directly from the operator's public catalogue — we crawl the same pages a consumer would see, then normalise the results into a single canonical schema so eSIM plans, physical SIM plans and starter packs are directly comparable.
Coverage data references the ACMA carrier register and each network operator's public coverage map — the numbers you see in editorial commentary are pulled from the operator's own claims, never inferred. Speed comparisons cite the underlying report (OpenSignal, Ookla, Umlaut) with the exact retrieval date. When a carrier updates its methodology, we re-verify affected pages within 30 days and stamp the change with an editor's note.
For dynamic surfaces — the live comparison pages, travel eSIM catalogue, and provider review pages — a weekly automated sweep re-fetches every source and re-scores every plan. If a source rotates its URL, changes its data format, or removes a plan we track, our monitoring pipeline alerts our operator team before the change leaks into rankings. This is the same pipeline that powers the freshness dashboard our editors watch every morning.
- Primary sources first: carrier catalogues, ACMA register, regulatory filings.
- Retrieval dates on every citation — you always know how fresh a number is.
- Automated schema-drift alerts catch upstream changes before they affect rankings.
Spotted an outdated citation or a link that no longer works? Let us know and we'll refresh it.