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Due an upgrade. Fancy a Samsung s10. Do a uswitch comes out at 36 a month on ee, speak to Vodafone they want 54 a month. So far off the mark.
As with most high volume high stakes products, the price is very carefully calculated. They will look at all their competitors and their own customers to work out where their money is coming from; they'll analyse how they behave, and they'll calculate how much they can charge to get the most money from the capacity they've got. This isn't necessarily from being the cheapest.
I'm guessing that EE having the first 5G network and the S10 being a flagship 5G phone might have something to do with it. EE are probably shifting them at a loss to get people onto their 5G network to a) get them hooked and b) free up capacity on their 4G network, shortly to start offering people big fat bundles. In fact, the other day I got a message from them about a 100GB/month SIM only deal for £27 which is much bigger/cheaper than anything they've offered before. At £36 they are probably taking a hit on that S10 I'd guess, that is very cheap for a just-release big name phone.
The other networks are available at 36 a month but again through the uswitch links. Do they have greater buying power than the huge phone companies or just lower margins to achieve? At the end of the day you still get the same billing, customer service, network, 4g strength etc from whichever provider you choose.
Due an upgrade.
But do you need one? You could save 100% if there's nowt wrong with your existing phone.
uswitch comes out at 36 a month on ee, speak to Vodafone they want 54 a month
Is that just for the phone, or do they include comparable talkplans?
At the end of the day you still get the same billing, customer service, network, 4g strength etc from whichever provider you choose.
One of the smaller companies will be buying network capacity from a bigger company. You might get the same signal strength but you aren't necessarily getting the same capacity when talking to the cell tower or the same network bandwith from the tower to the internet.
Yes you are. It's a straight contract with Vodafone set up via a 3rd party. You are still a Vodafone customer.
For that example it's 29 quid upfront Vs 50 quid on the reseller. It's then 54 a month. The reseller is offering 30gb Vs Vodafone which is 60gb.
I.e. not quite like for like.
Personally I have never found vodaphone competitive with any other operator.
They're only competitive with the 20% employee discount that many employers do.
Even at that, they're still shite. And expensive.
But do you need one?
I have an S8 with Plusnet at £10 a month, unlimited text & voice and 5GB data. I dropped it and cracked the screen and after the fact bought a £6 screen protector to stop it getting worse which has the unexpected effect of hiding the crack. It works fine, you wouldn't know it was cracked, and its cheap.
#materlismisdead
The reason for the differential is because they (the big operators) can. Enough people pay the premium to make it worth their while.
They also have retail overheads, so you can go into a store and speak to someone in a branded polo shirt. But that's not really the full story.
The big operators also outsource acquisition of customers to third parties, the likes of which appear on uSwitch and / or call you up encouraging you to sign up to a new contract.
The third party players get huge incentives for connecting large volumes of customers to the big operators, and they use the incentives to lower the rates they charge.
If they connect a punter up to a two year tariff of about £40 per month, they'll get a commission of about £750 from the operator. So plough some of that into reducing the line rental, and they appear very good value against going to the operator direct. And they still have some left to make a profit.
At the end of the day, the operators get punters direct to them at massive margin, and they get punters through the third parties at lower margin, but it all drives market share, which their shareholders love.
They also get revenue from offering their networks to Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) like Tesco, Virgin, Giff Gaff, Plus Net, Sky, etc etc etc.
The population tend towards the model that suits them best: direct, third party or MVNO.
And if we, the public, shop around, we get some of the best value calling plans in the world, not to mention pretty high quality infrastructure too.
That said, 5G is about £75 per month at the entry level. And that's with a low data limit. Personally, I'm out at those rates.
But the market will work its way into 5G pricing within a year or two.
Overall, I think mobile in the UK is a bit of a success story, from a commercial, customer service and even regulatory point of view.
I'm sure others will have different opinions.
Who, in their right mind, will go for a 5G contract and phone? There’s virtually no infrastructure, what there is, is very localised, it has very restricted range, (roughly 500 metres, line-of-sight), and has virtually no penetration of solid walls. There’s a greater chance of finding rainbow unicorns on every street corner.
As for anywhere outside of major conurbations, it’s going to be decades before any significant 5G coverage shows up, there are large tracts of the UK which haven’t even got 3G, let alone 4G - 5G is a phantom being sold to gullible punters by voracious networks looking to make large profits on a system that isn’t going to live up to the promises being made for it.
They will make it work. They need to, because there isn't enough bandwidth on 4G for everyone. Why do you think we pay through the nose for 10Gb a month? In the mean time, all phones will end up 5G compatible, the network will spread and we'll end up paying the same for more data so we'll be watching telly on trains and stuff.
It's almost as if engineers are clever people and have thought of these things...
Why do you think we pay through the nose for 10Gb a month?
What do you consider 'through the nose'? I think mobile data is very cheap now, I pay something like £20 for 20 Gb a month and that's no where near the cheapest deal out there. I remember paying a lot more for 20 Mb not that long ago....
Due an upgrade.
But do you need one? You could save 100% if there’s nowt wrong with your existing phone.
Due an upgrade.
But do you need one? You could save the planet (or at least do less harm) if there’s nowt wrong with your existing phone.
FTFY
I think mobile data is very cheap now
It's a lot more expensive than home broadband, per megabyte, but it's the same stuff.
Why do you think we pay through the nose for 10Gb a month?
I'm a tenner a month for 10gb with virgin, my nose is intact. 🙂
[strong]footflaps[/strong] wrote:
Why do you think we pay through the nose for 10Gb a month?
What do you consider ‘through the nose’? I think mobile data is very cheap now, I pay something like £20 for 20 Gb a month and that’s no where near the cheapest deal out there. I remember paying a lot more for 20 Mb not that long ago….
The UK is ranked 136 out of 230 for mobile data pricing. Average price in India is $0.27 per gb, in the uk it's $6.66 (no ide why the study is priced in dollars). UK is one of themost expensive in europe (and will probalby only get more expensive soon but let's not even look at that rabbit hole much less go down it)
When talking about paying for mobile data, I'm comparing it with fixed broadband, where I could get through 2-300Gb a month for £20. Now I'm on fibre if I had a 4k telly I could get through a terabyte or three if I wanted for £40. So a tenner for 10Gb is through the nose, yes.
When talking about paying for mobile data, I’m comparing it with fixed broadband, where I could get through 2-300Gb a month for £20.
Not exactly a fair comparison. A mobile network will never match a wired solution in terms of throughput or cost. Spectrum is limited, which limits mobile networks capicty. Cheap fibre can sustain 10s of Gb/s if not 100s. Mobile network need lots of base stations which cost a lot of run (rent mainly*). Fibre networks get free carriage in the ground, councils don't charge rent per km of cable run.
Wasn't so bad in the early days of mobile networks but now any savy landord uses an agent to deal with the MNOs who will charge the max for rental space on the roof etc. Interestingly in the City now, a lot of new apartment blocks are so upmarket they won't deal with MNOs as they don't want the hassle for a few 10s of £k per year; esp when one bed flats sell for £1m etc.
A mobile network will never match a wired solution in terms of throughput or cost.
I understood that the whole point of 5G was that it would.
I understood that the whole point of 5G was that it would.
That is what is known in the trade as 'hype'. 5G is at the Peak of inflated expectations right now...
In the UK the current 5G spectrum allocations are too small to challenge fibre in terms of throughput, but do have reasonable propagation. Verizon (US) is rolling out 5G in the 26 GHz band which has a lot more spectrum available, allowing Gb/s radio links, but the propagation is terrible so coverage is poor and they'll need millions of base stations, all costing a small fortune and someone charging rent on them all..
Long term the UK is looking to allocate the 26 band to 5G, but it will end up being split between the 3-5 operators, so actual throughput will be 1/3 to 1/5 of the equivalent Verizon service (they bought the whole band); still way off fibre.
The thing is mobile networks can't escape the physics of current wireless transmission. Higher data rates = higher frequency = shorter range. 5g will only ever be built up areas.