Which mobile network should I swap to?

[colly]

Another one for NOT Virgin.
Swapped to PlusNet last week

2 SIM cards . 2G and unlimited texts and calls on each
£14 per month for both

 

[cyberknight]

I use a lot of data no free WiFi at work and on hols this year non bar the club house so kids used my phone as a WiFi hotspot

 

[Brains]

All of the mobile phone suppliers are liars.
Some are worse that the others.
You have to treat them as you would Politicians and Estate Agents.

The mobile phone infrastructure of the UK is held together by string and wire, so no matter who the supplier is, they all have major issues with reception outside of towns.
No one (yet) is prepared to put the money into upgrading it, but at some point in the near future the government will have to wade in and arrange for almost total replacement of the entire rural mast network.

End of the day you go with the one that offers the best coverage where you live, and agrees, in writing, what they will and will not provide.

 

[Levo-Lon]

All of the mobile phone suppliers are liars.
Some are worse that the others.
You have to treat them as you would Politicians and Estate Agents.

The mobile phone infrastructure of the UK is held together by string and wire, so no matter who the supplier is, they all have major issues with reception outside of towns.
No one (yet) is prepared to put the money into upgrading it, but at some point in the near future the government will have to wade in and arrange for almost total replacement of the entire rural mast network.

End of the day you go with the one that offers the best coverage where you live, and agrees, in writing, what they will and will not provide.

In a nutshell

 

[Crackle]

Cheers everyone, I travel around a bit so signal coverage is going to vary for me anyway, and I'm not always within range of wifi.

The reason I'm not staying with EE is this -

Last August I took out a sim only with them, opting to pay by card each month rather than DD. One of my first questions was, can I use it in Europe? And I was told I could.

A month later I'm in Germany for work and my phone isn't working, using my work mobile to contact EE I'm told the reason I have no roaming is because I'm not on DD.

Once home I go back into the shop and stick my contract on the counter, 'oh yes it's because you're not on DD,' I hear, I'll gloss over my appraisal of their service.

So onto DD I go and this June I'm back in Hannover where once again my phone isn't working, this time the excuse is that it's because sim only deals don't qualify for roaming, pointing out that it's a different excuse to last time, and that the MY EE app on my phone says I have unlimited calls in the EU, doesn't seem to get me anywhere.

My contract's now up at twelve months so to use the vernacular, EE can stick it right up their ring.

Fair enough. I think some of the shops are franchises and don't offer the same deals as online. I went into one to see if I could get the deal I'd seen and they said they couldn't do it, so now I only deal with EE online or over the phone.

 

[KneesUp]

I have a SIM only deal with EE - paid by DD - and when I went to France last year it didn't work, because - it turns out - you have to enable 'roaming' - which costs nothing to do, and adds nothing to your bill. I am not sure why they assume customers would not want that by default. I spoke to customer services on the OHs phone (02) and it was all sorted very swiftly, but it wouldn't have been if I hadn't had her phone to use.

 

[swee'pea99]

you go with the one that offers the best coverage where you live

Or, if coverage isn't really an issue where you live, the one offering a tariff that best maps on to the way you actually use your phone - in my case, Three's 1, 2, 3 deal.

 

[ColinJ]

I think phone banking apps are secure over a public WiFi. They use SSL to establish a connection, so much more difficult to crack. Happy to be corrected on this though.

I was reading about this last night. The general opinion seemed to be 'Much safer, but not totally safe'!

All the sources I read recommended only using public wifi through a VPN.

 

[Brains]

As an aside, the emergency services are moving all 'walkie talkie' type of communications to Smart phones by 2022.
This has caused a problem in many areas as the coverage does not exist.
Snowdonia is a classic example, as two of the carriers admit to zero coverage for the entire area and two say their coverage is 'limited' (read borderline non existent)

Given that Snowdonia gets 4m visitors per year, plus another 4m that transit the area (it's the main route between Eire and Europe) and half a million go up Snowdon each year, unsurprisingly the Mountain Rescue is the most active in the UK.

They now have the issue of working out who is going to pay for the 5 masts that are required to give some sort of coverage for the area.

 

[KneesUp]

As an aside, the emergency services are moving all 'walkie talkie' type of communications to Smart phones by 2022.

Why?

(Just spend a blissful week in a bit of Suffolk with no coverage - would not have liked to have had an emergency, though)

 

[DRHysted]

As an aside, the emergency services are moving all 'walkie talkie' type of communications to Smart phones by 2022.
This has caused a problem in many areas as the coverage does not exist.
Snowdonia is a classic example, as two of the carriers admit to zero coverage for the entire area and two say their coverage is 'limited' (read borderline non existent)

Given that Snowdonia gets 4m visitors per year, plus another 4m that transit the area (it's the main route between Eire and Europe) and half a million go up Snowdon each year, unsurprisingly the Mountain Rescue is the most active in the UK.

They now have the issue of working out who is going to pay for the 5 masts that are required to give some sort of coverage for the area.

I bet certain groups will keep standard units.
Our areas fire service replaced their intrinsically safe radios with normal ones due to the savings, this worked fine until they came to a full scale exercise where I work where only intrinsically safe equipment is allowed in. At this point the control unit offsite lost all communication with the pumps onsite. Shortly afterwards the fire service invested in some new intrinsically safe radios.

 

[DCBassman]

Using free WiFi is a very risky proposition. I wouldn’t risk it myself.

And why on earth not? So long as your device is as fully up to date as it can be, you're not likely to be at any more risk than using your own wifi.
If you're using something still on Android 4 or earlier, then maybe...

 

[DCBassman]

The mobile phone infrastructure of the UK is held together by string and wire,

As far as I understand it, the 2G network was 900MHz, then added 1800. Being utterly dim, the UK split the frequencies between suppliers. This completely negated the technical ability of nearly every dual-band phone to frequency-hop, in order to get best signal. In Europe, most providers had some of each band to facilitate this. Thereafter, of course, it all got a lot more complex as 3G and onward kicked in...

 

[Brains]

Why?

(Just spend a blissful week in a bit of Suffolk with no coverage - would not have liked to have had an emergency, though)

That is the issue:
8.5m visitors PA, to a potentially hostile environment, with zero phone coverage.
(Plus tens of thousands of local residents)
What could possibly go wrong ?

 

[Adam4868]

I have a SIM only deal with EE - paid by DD - and when I went to France last year it didn't work, because - it turns out - you have to enable 'roaming' - which costs nothing to do, and adds nothing to your bill. I am not sure why they assume customers would not want that by default. I spoke to customer services on the OHs phone (02) and it was all sorted very swiftly, but it wouldn't have been if I hadn't had her phone to use.

Unless you've got roaming turned on and you use it on the ferry over to France.I learnt the hard way on my kids phones ! Something about being international waters and their own cellular prices.#twats