GiffGaff runs on the O2 network, but could it get low priority?

Poq

GiffGaff is an MVNO on the O2 network. (In fact, it's a subsidiary of O2.)

Would it be legal for O2 to reserve faster internet speeds, call quality, text sending, etc. for O2 clients, and leave GiffGaff users as secondary?

I am very happy with GiffGaff's price, but there have been several O2 downtimes that have hit GiffGaff pretty hard. Also, sometimes texts take a long time to reach the recipient and call quality can be bad. (I was under the impression that O2 is the best in the UK.)

bengalknights

Not unless both subsidiarys have an agreement as such

The only difference between the two are costs and different systems they use.

GooliesOfFire

Wrong impression you were under. In terms of UK coverage O2 is second worst. Only the Three has worse coverage.

I'm with giffgaff and except some outages that hit both O2 and giffgaff users I had no problems mentioned above. In fact my data speed is very decent compared to i.e. T-Mobile. Giffgaff download speed 3Mb/s, upload speed 2Mb/s. No delayed texts noticed, call quality is ok.

Herongull

Move to Ovivo instead and pay £0 per month - they have generous free monthly bundles (and if you need more, additional minutes, texts and data are very reasonably priced).

http://ovivomobile.com/our-offer/

Ovivo are on the vodafone network which has better coverage than O2, but obviously there will be some areas where O2 is better.

Poq

Thanks guys. Some questions:

bengalknights wrote: »

The only difference between the two are costs and different systems they use.

Different systems?

GooliesOfFire wrote: »

Wrong impression you were under. In terms of UK coverage O2 is second worst. Only the Three has worse coverage.

Ha! Thanks :P

Isn't O2 the most expensive? Coverage isn't really the issue as I'm usually in London (should be equal for all providers, right?), but I mean things like call dropping, call quality, internet speed, reliability, downtime, technology, etc.

Herongull wrote: »

Move to Ovivo instead and pay £0 per month - they have generous free monthly bundles (and if you need more, additional minutes, texts and data are very reasonably priced).

Really interesting, thanks! Although it's £0/month, you need to pay £10 to sign up. But the bundles aren't that great — for £5 or £10 with GiffGaff you get more of everything it seems...

Ovivo are on the vodafone network which has better coverage than O2, but obviously there will be some areas where O2 is better.

Ah, yeah? Like where?

pepdavies

I'm on Giffgaff, my girlfriend is on Vodafone. She's always having to use my phone. I think O2 has better coverage but pretty dismal data speeds

lil.smartie

Vodafone is terrible in Somerset!

Kate

Herongull

Really interesting, thanks! Although it's £0/month, you need to pay £10 to sign up. But the bundles aren't that great — for £5 or £10 with GiffGaff you get more of everything it seems...

You've got to remember that with Ovivo you get the free bundle + whatever bundle you pay for.

For example if you need lots of minutes, but the free text and data bundle is adequate, you can pay £10 to get 400 minutes plus 100 free minutes = 500minutes, whereas even if you pay £15 on Giffgaff you only get 400 minutes.

No point in paying for more texts or whatever than you use.

The other useful thing about Ovivo is that when you topup £10 per month on consecutive months, the free bundle is permanently increased eg after 6 months of topups, the free bundle is doubled, so you don't need to add on as much (if at all).

The £10 you pay when you get the sim gives you £10 credit, so it is not really a cost.

sillygoose

Now I assumed the infrastructure is the same its pretty much just different billing, but I have 2 Android phones before me, one is on O2 Corprorate account, the other GiffGaff.

The one on O2 is a better phone so its not entirely fair and I can't be bothered to swap sims

But the O2 on HSDPA on Speed Test clocked between 4000 and over 6000kbps. :cool:

Same program set to the same server, the GiffGaff phone clocked between 1000 and 1400kbps.

Now it could be I am getting better O2 than 'normal' as its a business corporate account for an extremely big customer, or the better phone is able to run a better HSDPA mode (seems to be in 9).

I must do a swap around when I get time to see for sure.

sillygoose

Herongull wrote: »

You've got to remember that with Ovivo you get the free bundle + whatever bundle you pay for.

For example if you need lots of minutes, but the free text and data bundle is adequate, you can pay £10 to get 400 minutes plus 100 free minutes = 500minutes, whereas even if you pay £15 on Giffgaff you only get 400 minutes.

No point in paying for more texts or whatever than you use.

The other useful thing about Ovivo is that when you topup £10 per month on consecutive months, the free bundle is permanently increased eg after 6 months of topups, the free bundle is doubled, so you don't need to add on as much (if at all).

The £10 you pay when you get the sim gives you £10 credit, so it is not really a cost.

Still seems like a bad deal for use in a smartphone, £10 a month gets you a paltry 100mins /100 texts and 1gb data.

For £2 more on GiffGaff you get 250min, unlimited text, unlimited data.

With a smartphone its all too possible for something to go wrong and horrendous data charges to rack up which are hard to fight - this forum is full of tales of such woe every week. Unlimited data gives a safety shield from ever being hit with these £100's of charges if it goes wrong. Worse case you will get in trouble for exceeding fair use policy but at least it won't cost you anything.

However Ovivo would be good as a starter for a child to keep in touch on a basic phone or someone just needing a cheap to run handset for occasional or emergency use its very attractive.

rwalton159

My wife, daughter and I use GG and despite a few outages this year they are the best network we've used.