Telstra’s 2011 Smartphone Index released in July revealed that we’re using our mobiles to do more things than ever before and smartphones are beginning to challenge PCs as a preferred way to access certain content online.

So with everyone spending more time on their mobiles, we’ve launched My Plan Manager^TM – a portal that provides our consumer postpaid customers with better visibility and control of their mobile spend direct from their mobile.

My Plan Manager™ is available for all consumer postpaid customers on all handsets types and allows you to understand at a glance how much mobile  data you’ve used, how many days left until your next bill is due, update your BigPond  preferences and much more.  The visual changes to the page put you in control to easily track your data usage and avoid additional charges before your bill arrives.

My Plan Manager™ lets you perform a number of convenient activities including:

• check your mobile data usage against your included data quotas;
• add a mobile data pack direct from your handset, automatically, to avoid pay as you go charges;
• check your device to see if it’s currently activated for International Roaming; and
• for the first time purchase an International Roaming data pack straight from your mobile – even when abroad.

My Plan Manager™ is on the “My” Tab on your mobile handset (pictured) and it’s simple to use, easy to navigate and ready when you are.

All of the ‘My’ tab pages are unmetered for mobile data usage within Australia so there are no fees or data usage.

To access My Plan Manager, all you need to do is:

• press the BigPond icon on your handset, or type m.bigpond.com into your mobile’s browser and save it as a bookmark
• click on the “My” tab at the top of the screen to see information on My Plan Manager™

The Smartphone Index revealed that more Australians are using the mobile internet on their phones, with 90 per cent of Australian smartphone owners having accessed the internet on their mobiles phones, with 61 per cent now accessing the internet on their mobiles daily – up from 53 per cent in 2010.

We boosted the included data on our consumer post-paid plans earlier this year to cater for this trend, and to help customers keep track of how much data they’ve consumed we’ve introduced a new Data Usage tab,

The Daily Data Usage (pictured) information now displays a consolidated daily view of all your previous data activities, in different colours to advise you whether it is data used within your data allowance, or under pay as you go rates/excess charges.

Information displayed on the Mobile Data Usage Meter is typically current as of six – 24 hours ago.

Look out for more enhancements specifically for mobile data usage between now and the end of the year!

We recognise that we need to provide you with more convenient ways to deal with Telstra for certain types of transactions – and at times and places that suit you. My Plan Manager™ is Telstra’s first step in delivering a comprehensive series of self help and service management capabilities to use directly from your mobile device.

For more information about My Plan Manager watch the KnowHow video here.

Try it today and let us know what you think of your new portal.