I've been with Vaya for a while, and previously I was with Vodafone. Vodafone would give me pretty good coverage (3G) in most places I went to, including home, work and uni. However the plan I was on was too expensive so I ported over to Vaya, which I found to be one of my biggest mistakes of 2014.
I obviously checked the coverage map on Vaya prior to porting, as I live in a developing suburb, and saw that - great! 4G coverage in my area according to Vaya! How convenient! BUT I'm lucky to get a single bar at home. Usually, I will have SOS-only, and it is extremely difficult to make a phone call from in/around my house. In fact, once I find a particular spot which doesn't cut off the call, I have to strain my body to keep my phone incredibly still so as not to cut off the call. Often, messages will not send, and it's just generally difficult to do anything with my phone which doesn't require wifi.
So.. I'm considering moving to Telechoice, as I would expect Telstra lines to have better coverage in my area.
Spintel seems like another great prepaid plan, but I read that they also use Optus lines, and therefore don't see the point in porting to them.
Have you guys experienced any coverage issues with your carrier that you did not expect?
Urgh so annoyed that Vaya's coverage map is so, so false.
Coverage map is pretty ok, when you are outdoors.
The smart way to test mobile signal is buy a telstra vodafone and optus sim, almost all mobile companies use these 3 networks and you just have to research which network the mobile reseller uses. For example vaya is optus. Telechoice has Kogan(Telstra) and telechoice used some other networks in the past too.