The consumer advocacy group Choice is criticizing Telstra's prices compared to other telcos, and urged customers to break their contracts in light of seven major service outrages in just five months.

The analysis by Choice examined the so-called "Telstra tax" consumers were paying for guaranteed service uptime, indicating that Telstra customers were paying up to 92 percent more for their broadband service and up to 35 percent for their mobile plans compared to customers on equivalent products offered by Vodafone, Optus, Virgin Mobile, TPG, and iiNet.  The group said that customers could get out of paying an exit fee due to Telstra's widely reported series of outages that have plagued the telco over the past five months.

But a Telstra spokesperson claims that Choice's analysis was flawed and ignored a handful of its comparable plans.  "In its analysis Choice misses many of our most comparable plans and fails to consider things customers tell us are most important, such as the breadth, speeds and availability of our network and the extras we include like free and unlimited access to Australia's largest wi-fi network, free AFL and NRL season passes, free home broadband and mobile security, Telstra TV and free Apple Music on many plans," the spokesperson said.