Mobiles and tech stuff

Think here it's more seen as a financing deal/loan to buy the phone for folks who can't afford it outright and so there's effectively an interest charge.

I pay £51 a month for 4 sims with 100GB data and unlimited voice/texts. 5G allegedly but that is just a fake concept in my experience.

And it's on O2 which means 500MB of data would be enough as the signal is shit pretty much everywhere I go.

Will be switching back to the EE network soon as contract ends (probably to 1p Mobile that tricky mentions).

@Russ - presumably because the number of masts needed to cover your huge country means that scaling up costs a ton of money.

I’m on Smartty at the moment. This deal. No contract SIM only month to month. Then yes, I’ll buy a phone outright and stick the SIM in it.

That's absolutely how we justify it (in case you hadn't twigged, I work for one of the big 3 carriers in Canada). That said, we have significant infrastructure sharing agreements so that carriers use each other's towers, 90% of our population lives within a one hour drive of the border, and 80% lives in an urban centre. So it's not like we need to flood wire the country the way you guys do.

Based in Russ’ numbers, Australia has BYOD plans that are similar to the UK.. so it’s probably not that.

Bring Your Own Didgeridoo?

I pay £6.95/month on Lebara - Vodafone. 15GB.

None of the networks here are anywhere near the quality and spread of coverage I had in Thailand where I paid £30/year for unlimited 10Mbps. I could've got unlimited 20Mbps fir a bit more, but it was unnecessary, the 10Mbps was nearly always what I got.

Here if I go into Hereford on a Saturday, the speeds die to nearly zero. Same for my wife on real Vodafone and daughter on ID Mobile (which we got 30GB for £7/month, Three MVNO).

This will likely be because in Hereford I presume they still stand around in awe at the magic lights that come on without needing to have a flame put to them, and cower in fear from the big metal dragons that fly overhead.

All fine so far with regard speed, service, signal etc. They use the Three network if you want to look at the Three coverage map.

If I'm being really picky there are 1-2 streets near me, which are in a valley and the reception can be a bit hit and miss. But that's a 100m stretch of road and it's the only problem I can recall. Oh - there was totally no signal for about 2 hours a few months ago. Nationally I think. That's all I've got.

I'd do a speed test right now and post the results, but my phone won't turn on as discussed ....

Just turned off my WiFi and did that speed check.

0.22 Mbps.

Wow. That’s slow. Mine is 3.7 Mbps on Vodafone 4G, and that’s not good at all. Yours is atrocious. I’m currently in Barnsley though. I guess there’s lots of spare bandwidth given they’re still using string and carrier pigeons.

7.74 indoors in Southwell. Vodafone 4G.