IiNet enters mobile market but you'll need your own phone

For consumers, the post-paid monthly plans range from $10 per month to $20 and at the time $40, and come with 200MB, 500MB and 1.5GB of download quota respectively, along with what iiNet described as $150, $400 and $750 worth of included call value to any other mobile phone network. Excess data charges at set at 20c per megabyte. Business plans cost a little more - starting at $14.95 and ranging up to $49 per month and with higher download quotas.

The consumer plans include unmetered traffic to social networking and ecommerce sites like Facebook, MySpace, twitter, LinkedIn, eBay and Foursquare.

Councils across Australia are unanimous in recognising the potential efficiencies in field staff using mobile devices just as smart phones and iPads to access information from council intranet and internet-based systems.