Retailers Coles and Kogan have teamed up with two of Australia’s biggest telephone companies to launch new prepaid mobile offers for customers this week.

Coles and Optus have launched a selection of new prepaid mobile plans, with short and long expiry options allowing customers more flexibility and control in managing weekly budgets.

Designed to help Australian families manage their mobile spend, customers can enjoy more choice and flexibility on the new Coles Prepaid $10 for 10 days mobile plan with unlimited standard national talk and text within Australia, and 400MB of data on the superfast Optus 4G Plus network, which covers close to 90% of the Australian population.

Coles General Manager Non-Food, Karin Zimmerman, said Coles is delighted to partner with Optus to deliver great value for prepaid mobile customers as the category continues to grow.

Coles Prepaid will be available at all Coles Supermarkets and Coles Express sites across Australia, as well as online.

The same day, Kogan Mobile announced it was relaunching, powered by Vodafone, to offer consumers a new range of low priced communications options. The combination of Kogan Mobile devices on the Vodafone network will see competitive pricing drive the unlimited standard national call and text offers.

Kogan Mobile offers easy setup, auto-recharge options, no hidden fees, tri-fit SIM card, per kilobyte charging, and awesome 3G coverage.

Recent findings from Roy Morgan showed the majority of prepaid mobile users still prefer to recharge in-store despite more online options becoming available. However, by offering their customers the option to recharge exclusively online, via SMS, or auto-recharge Kogan Mobile is creating yet more competition for bricks-and-mortar retailers.

Although a spokesperson for Roy Morgan Research told C&I Media that the new services from Coles and Kogan aren’t yet tracked by the market research company, if the two companies do gain enough traction to be included in analysis it will be interesting to see whether their customers’ choice reflect or buck current trends.

This story first appeared in Convenience and Impulse Retailing.