3rd party cheaper than main network providers

manamaga2512

I've been shopping round for a new mobile phone contract and always find that the 3rd party companies such as giffgaff, carphone warehouse, are always cheaper than the main providers such as vodafone, ee etc. Now I've been told that this is because, 3rd party sellers are only rented 'part' of the network by the main providers, and you don't get the full service, full download speeds etc. I wanted to check if there is any truth in this. Can anyone 'on the inside' confirm or disprove this at all?

Many thanks.

grumbler

manamaga2512 wrote: »

I've been shopping round for a new mobile phone contract and always find that the 3rd party companies such as giffgaff, carphone warehouse, are always cheaper than the main providers such as vodafone, ee etc. Now I've been told that this is because, 3rd party sellers are only rented 'part' of the network by the main providers, and you don't get the full service, full download speeds etc. I wanted to check if there is any truth in this. Can anyone 'on the inside' confirm or disprove this at all?

CPW is cheaper because they get a big commission from networks for selling their contracts and pass it partly to the customers. The contract is directly with the network and so are the services.

Giffgaff is a virtual sub-network and indeed, the speeds can reportedly be lower.
CPW have their own virtual network too - iD Mobile: MSE News: Carphone Warehouse launches mobile network. But is iD any good?

macman

It is often alleged that MVNO's provide a sub-standard service, but there's little firm evidence of this. I have used Asda Mobile, o2, giffgaff and Tesco Mobile in succession, and have never noticed the latter two to be inferior to the second: Tesco Mobile's customer service is very good, as was Asda Mobile's under Vodafone, until they moved it to EE and it fell apart.
Who told you this-was it perchance a rep selling for EE, Voda, o2 or 3 by any chance?

manamaga2512

I was looking for my next deal as im out of contract now. Uswitch came up with a deal for the GS6 with 5gb data, unlimited texts and minutes for £31.99 a month. The deal was through mobilephonesdirect.co.uk and was on the ee network. So I got on the chat on ee's website and asked them if they could do the same deal. The guy said no and when I asked why not he said that they are cheaper because they dont have access to the full network / speeds etc etc. Then after discussing with my gaffer at work, we summised that although this maybe true for the likes of companies who 'piggy back' the networks, like tesco and asda, the same cannot be said for CPW or phones4U etc because the sim card you get is actually an ee sim or O2 or whoever, whereas with tesco, you get a tesco sim. Sorry for the long post but this (I think) all makes sense in my head now! LOL. I think that I will be fine going with mobilephonesdirect to be honest.