pay as you go tarriffs

grintricha

thanks everyone, it's difficult to argue aginst ovivo, going to give them a try

espresso

Cisco001 wrote: »

GiffGaff worth the money if 1 GB data is needed.

grintricha wrote: »

thanks everyone, it's difficult to argue aginst ovivo, going to give them a try

Have you checked 3G Internet coverage in places that you may want to use it on both O2 and Vodafone?

Their 3G coverage is currently pathetic compared to the other main networks and if internet access is important you may get very slow speed when you need it!

macman

niftyone wrote: »

How does Giff Gaff,s 10p a minute a call and 6p text for standard users beat Tesco Lite ,Ovivo or White Mobile ?

It doesn't. But if you use the Goodybag options then you get more for your money-but it is then time-limited to 30 days.

xinaes

espresso wrote: »

Have you checked 3G Internet coverage in places that you may want to use it on both O2 and Vodafone?

Their 3G coverage is currently pathetic compared to the other main networks and if internet access is important you may get very slow speed when you need it!

Apparently they've done a deal to both use the same infrastructure, so coverage should be identical, although I'm not sure in what timeframe.

I'm still not aloud to post links as a new user, but there's a post on Vodafone blog about this from Nov 2012.

We’ve partnered with O2 to give you even better mobile coverage across the UK, but we’re definitely not merging with them, this is only about the physical infrastructure at the end of our network. What we’re doing is putting our masts and O2’s masts together, getting rid of duplicates and building out some new ones (there will be about 18,500 of them by the time we’re done). We’ll both plug our networks into those masts and all of them will deliver a signal to our customers.

Off topic, but apparently redundant network infrastructure is a massive waste of energy, so it might be good for the environment if this trend continues.

DonnyDave

xinaes wrote: »

Off topic, but apparently redundant network infrastructure is a massive waste of energy, so it might be good for the environment if this trend continues.

This is an inevitable outcome of having more than one network. Us all paying more, or getting less coverage than we otherwise might do, could be another down-side.

From an engineering point of view it would make much more sense having one network of base stations. There would not need to be so many base stations.

At present, if the number of calls/connections reaches its limit on one network in a particular area and with the other networks there is still spare capacity, this makes no difference and the congested network is therefore unavailable to subscribers in that area. This is another downside of partitioning the spectrum by provider.

However, the consolidation of O2's and Vodafone's base stations is simply that they will be sharing sites. There will still be two base stations at each site and so two sets of equipment and two sets of antennas and so on.

The advantage to these operators is to reduce the costs they pay for rental (or leasing) of the land or space at the sites. Maybe there are other advantages like consolidating the cost of electricity connections.

xinaes

DonnyDave wrote: »

This is an inevitable outcome of having more than one network. Us all paying more, or getting less coverage than we otherwise might do, could be another down-side.

Indeed

However, the consolidation of O2's and Vodafone's base stations is simply that they will be sharing sites. There will still be two base stations at each site and so two sets of equipment and two sets of antennas and so on.

Hmm, I didn't realise that, interesting.

DonnyDave

xinaes wrote: »

Hmm, I didn't realise that, interesting.

I may have to take back what I said about sharing the equipment at each site. See this page on O2's site.:o

Are customers going to be able to roam across networks, ie use both the O2 and Vodafone network?

No. This is just about sharing the land and the basic network infrastructure and equipment…

espresso

xinaes wrote: »

Apparently they've done a deal to both use the same infrastructure, so coverage should be identical, although I'm not sure in what timeframe.

Yes last November they agreed to share the basic parts of their network infrastructure however each will still operate in their own frequency allocations. They will not be sharing their signal, frequency spectrum, fibre backbone network, or any of their services.

They are simply playing catch up, because they are aiming to provide 98% coverage across their 2G and 3G networks by the end of 2015, when the EE(Orange/T-Mobile) and 3 networks already do this now.

I have recently considered switching networks but the 3G coverage on o2 and Voda is simply pathetic when compared to the others networks at this point in time, so I have ruled out these two operators.

Using their coverage checkers in many places that I have visited recently it states:

Slow Speed
On a 3G phone You can expect to be able to use email and internet on your 3G phone, indoors and outdoors. However, speeds for downloading files and watching videos online will be slower than you might like.

Using a laptop or tablet here to access the internet will be slow and isn’t recommended.

When clicking on See future coverage it states:

Sorry – there are no upgrades planned in the next 12 months that will improve the coverage here.

Check coverage very carefully before going with GiffGaff or OVIVO if you require 3G data outside of highly populated areas!

.

d123

john1 wrote: »

The phone may require unlocking to go from EE to Whitemobile although both on same physical network.

Just to clear up this point, the White sim arrived today, as I expected, it works perfectly in an iPhone locked to EE (T-Mobile).