MSE News: Giffgaff's goodybags are changing: Are you a winner or a loser?

trubster

sillygoose wrote: »

Giff gaff aside I am curious, just out of interest, what would I do with that speed on a phone? I really don't know.

Most web pages don't take long to load with any thing over 0.5Mb/s, email only needs a fraction of that most other apps only need a trickle of data.

Apart from streaming video, which I don't need as I have content preloaded in memory.

Not saying it wouldn't be nice, but can't see it actually making my life any better in real terms.

What is more important is continuity of signal and I would say O2 is dropping the ball there for sure. Its unacceptable that when both parties are stationary (so staying on the same masts with good signals), that a call should be dropped with 'network busy'. Hey! I was using it! give 'network busy' to people trying to connect, not cut off people already connected!

I do tend to do a lot of HD Streaming on my laptop, phone or tablet. I am a HGV driver so go through the data like no tomorrow.

I don't listen to the radio any more, I listen to Google Play Music, which I pay £7.99 a month for and stream HQ Audio direct to the speakers of the truck whilst out and about, speed is everything when streaming and it is VERY rare to need more than a second or two buffering time.

When parked up, the Video on demand services are up and running, same if I am being loaded/unloaded which takes a couple of hours, perfect to watch a film on the bed.

That is also how I ended up going through 90 odd gig in a month.

I know from experience this is not possible on GG as I WAS a customer, but the slow speeds and dropped calls were beyond a joke.

I pay £15 a month to Three for a sim only package, I get 3000 mins, 5000 3 - 3 mins, 5000 SMS's and All you can eat data (Literally!) which includes unlimited tethering. I paid £399 for my phone (Note 3) If I work it out on a 24 month contract, it works out about £31.65 a month, instead of the £38 they wanted with the phone bundled.

I also got something like £60 Quidco too

d123

trubster wrote: »

I pay £15 a month to Three for a sim only package, I get 3000 mins, 5000 3 - 3 mins, 5000 SMS's and All you can eat data (Literally!) which includes unlimited tethering. I paid £399 for my phone (Note 3) If I work it out on a 24 month contract, it works out about £31.65 a month, instead of the £38 they wanted with the phone bundled.

Are you sure of your minutes allocation? Sounds like you are describing the One Plan, which I don't think has 3000 minutes included...

joeluken

balletshoes wrote: »

its my daughter who is on giffgaff, she uses 3G out and about, she has never mentioned slow data speeds to me (and believe me she'd moan her head off if her beloved Apple devices didn't work speedily enough for her).

The problem is knowing what speed people achieve because what may be ok for some people of applications is unusable for others. Ask your daughter to run speedtest.net (like this http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/962993200) during the peak day and post a link to the test results. That way people have a common frame of reference rather that trying to guess what people mean by fast or slow.

trubster

d123 wrote: »

Are you sure of your minutes allocation? Sounds like you are describing the One Plan, which I don't think has 3000 minutes included...

I am referring to the "One Plan"

Your right, I checked, it is 2000 Mins and 5000 3 to 3 minutes, 5000 SMS Messages and AYCE Data.

sillygoose

trubster wrote: »

I do tend to do a lot of HD Streaming on my laptop, phone or tablet. I am a HGV driver so go through the data like no tomorrow.

I don't listen to the radio any more, I listen to Google Play Music, which I pay £7.99 a month for and stream HQ Audio direct to the speakers of the truck whilst out and about, speed is everything when streaming and it is VERY rare to need more than a second or two buffering time.

When parked up, the Video on demand services are up and running, same if I am being loaded/unloaded which takes a couple of hours, perfect to watch a film on the bed.

That is also how I ended up going through 90 odd gig in a month.

I know from experience this is not possible on GG as I WAS a customer, but the slow speeds and dropped calls were beyond a joke.

I pay £15 a month to Three for a sim only package, I get 3000 mins, 5000 3 - 3 mins, 5000 SMS's and All you can eat data (Literally!) which includes unlimited tethering. I paid £399 for my phone (Note 3) If I work it out on a 24 month contract, it works out about £31.65 a month, instead of the £38 they wanted with the phone bundled.

I also got something like £60 Quidco too

Interesting.. thanks for the detailed answer. I guess its not something I could imagine doing but I can see it would be very handy in your situation.

I work out and about and was on the road 6 hours today (not as long as an HGV day I know) but still it was very boring on my own in traffic so slow.. you must crave new entertainment. I know I spend a lot of time on the handsfree chatting.

I don't like paying subscriptions for anything so source my content from wherever.

I am surprised truckers don't fit one of those caravan mini satellite dishes and receivers.

trubster

sillygoose wrote: »

I am surprised truckers don't fit one of those caravan mini satellite dishes and receivers.

They do, you see them all the time when they are parked up overnight (Mainly euro lorries)

Not practical for me, I don't sleep in lorries and TBH mobile streaming is ideal

buglawton

trubster wrote: »

...I pay £15 a month to Three for a sim only package, I get 3000 mins, 5000 3 - 3 mins, 5000 SMS's and All you can eat data (Literally!) which includes unlimited tethering. I paid £399 for my phone (Note 3) If I work it out on a 24 month contract, it works out about £31.65 a month, instead of the £38 they wanted with the phone bundled...

I think you may be showing off that you got your 3 contract years ago, unlimited tethering from 3 is now history.
So regrettably the deal described here cannot be used to compare with today's offers. For £15 today you get up to 4GB of tethering and unlimited phone data - hence you need the biggest phablet possible to extract best use for media consumption.

joeluken

buglawton wrote: »

I think you may be showing off that you got your 3 contract years ago, unlimited tethering from 3 is now history.
So regrettably the deal described here cannot be used to compare with today's offers. For £15 today you get up to 4GB of tethering and unlimited phone data - hence you need the biggest phablet possible to extract best use for media consumption.

The One Plan was available for new subscribers up to 14/7/2014 so hardly "years ago".


I'm sure plenty of people took advantage of this and continue to enjoy all you can eat up to 4G tethering. With giffgaff you're only buying 30 days of service and after that the price, allowance or your ability to even continue to buy its unlimited data offering can change.


On a more general note about comparing people often focus on price and assume 3G or 4G is equal but it
is far from equal in terms of speed and coverage. Giffgaff rent a limited amount of bandwidth from Telefonica UK and once that bandwidth is used data performance on 3G and 4G dives. This happens frequently during the day time.


Here's what giffgaff recently confirmed about it dire internet speeds - "The key difference here is that Three is a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) but giffgaff is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). In this scenario the key difference is that Three can shove as much data through at a mast level, congestion in London won't affect Inverness. MVNO's have a different situation though, we rent a chunk of bandwidth from the MNOs at the top level, above masts. We cannot exceed a certain amount of data per second, if we try to then we start losing packets of data because O2 won't send it through. This means that if our Londoner friend is using up such a big chunk of that data that it brings us to our data per second cap that our Inverness member will have a poor experience because the network is full. "


Also regarding bandwidth increase -

"We buy a chunk ahead of time and then resell it. We can't just buy more ahead of time though, there are complex negotiations that need to be held and the increases will be gradual. It's definitely something that we're working on though."


http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Contribute/Myths-a-few-data-munchers-are-what-is-slowing-us-down-really/td-p/14759071

Alias_Omega

Currently have 3x £10 GiffGaff sims/deal.

Were moving, and the signal drops from H to G where the new house is, therefore its time to change signals.

We GiffGaff due to the flexability, however its just not good enough when we move..

PS - Data, not really fussed as we go from WiFi to WiFi...all relatives WiFi is stored on our phones..

trubster

buglawton wrote: »

I think you may be showing off that you got your 3 contract years ago, unlimited tethering from 3 is now history.
So regrettably the deal described here cannot be used to compare with today's offers. For £15 today you get up to 4GB of tethering and unlimited phone data - hence you need the biggest phablet possible to extract best use for media consumption.

I took it out about 9 months ago.

You can still tether and get unlimited data on the newer plans as you point out, which is one thing that GG will not allow you to do, even though they advertise "Unlimited" data, it certainly isn't.

Three on the other hand IS unlimited. The service just isn't comparible, you can't compare GG's GPRS/2G/3G with Three's HSDPA/HSDPA-DC or even 4G (All available at no extra cost)

My phone is the size it is because I don't want a small phone. I can and do tether to an android tablet, which even on the newer contracts would be undetectable as a tethered device as the traffic is still android data.