O2 vs Giffgaff

wiogs

Not as exciting a deal as I thought anyway. Thanks for the link

wallofbeans

d123 wrote: »

Definitely not, EE has significantly more spectrum, Three is already suffering with congestion, that's why Traffic Sense was implemented and why the old plans like the One Plan are being cancelled.

EE has the capacity to give away free sims with 200GB data on, just to test the network, Three are going the opposite way and limiting use.

The only other network with the spectrum allocation to threaten EE in the future is actually Vodafone.

I'm currently on Virgin, which piggybacks on EE and is patchy at best, especially with data. I've been thinking EE is bad because of this but maybe not..?

System

We'll have to agree to differ

3 has a much smaller customer base than EE; their 3G/4G is very stable.

All my friends on EE complain about the network speed regularly - I've even been sitting next to them with my phone working well but theirs not even loading webpages or Facebook.

As for Vodafone; I'm not going to go there but having more spectrum doesn't always mean faster internet...

d123 wrote: »

Definitely not, EE has significantly more spectrum, Three is already suffering with congestion, that's why Traffic Sense was implemented and why the old plans like the One Plan are being cancelled.

The only other network with the spectrum allocation to threaten EE in the future is actually Vodafone.

wallofbeans

i think a lot of this comes down to where you are in the country. I am mostly needing it to work in London, Kent and Dorset. London most of time!

d123

Heng_Leng wrote: »

As for Vodafone; I'm not going to go there but having more spectrum doesn't always mean faster internet...

Vodafone is going to be a lot different in the future, they might even have usable 3G after the Cornerstone upgrade is completed.

Vodafone have huge potential with the spectrum they have across 800/900/2100/2600, IIRC Vodafone have more 2600MHz alone than Three have in total across all frequncies.

Vodafone CS will probably never improve though...

MSM78

My giffgaff experience

Live in Peterborough, commute to and work in Central London.

After being on O2 for many years moved to giffgaff and stayed with them for about a year up to 2013. After a terrible start, no phone after they took over ten days to port me over after a failed port, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and they were ok but then suffered numerous (publicised) network dropouts becoming too unreliable to be a serious provider. Their 3G was very slow, 2MB/s max. Customer service amounted to cut-n-paste responses to your questions after a 24hr wait along the lines of 'try reseting your phone' or 'move to a different area'

Moved to Orange on contract, which initially were a massive improvement and I thought were great, although when they became EE their network coverage seemed to vanish. Loads of dead spots. Network hangups. No data coverage. Voicemails taking 14 days (seriously) to arrive. Customer service was scandalous, they actually lie to you or just hang up.

Went back to giffgaff temporarily just before xmas to see if they'd improved while I'd been away but their 3G now less than 1MB/s at pretty much any time of day. They may run on O2 but they are seriously throttled.

Took out Vodafone contract in December and been impressed with them so far. 4G in most places now and data speeds far better than EE and giffgaff, 4G around 14MB/s upload around 8MB/s last time I checked.

EE & giffgaff avoid IMO

oldharryrocks

wallofbeans wrote: »

I know Giffgaff runs on the o2 network but I've heard that it's their lowest priority so is slower etc. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

See this useful thread on the subject.;)

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5005903

Rev

Tesco use o2's network and having been a customer of both I've found no difference in quality of signal etc. Data is no slower on tesco then when I was with O2. Difference I've found is tesco customer service is head and shoulders above o2's pathetic attempts at customer service which generally included being passed to various different reps and having to repeat yourself ten times, after waiting anything up to three hours on hold only to be fobbed off because serving their customers is the last thing customer service is actually interested in.

Tesco also have cheap sim only deals and hard caps on contracts.

wongataa

MSM78 wrote: »

My giffgaff experience

snip

EE & giffgaff avoid IMO

My GiffGaff experience is positive. I haven't had any issues with them at all.

sillygoose

wongataa wrote: »

My GiffGaff experience is positive. I haven't had any issues with them at all.

Same here. If someone wants to stream video on the go or surf a lot they are not for you. But for calls, unlimited texts and collecting emails/the odd webpage or connected app they are still generally a simple cost effective service. We have several people on it and service reliability has been vastly improved for us for some time. (at last!)