New mobile SIM contract

[Flibb]

Just wondered if anybody has seen any good sim only contracts / PAYG / 30 day contracts recently. Just finished a contract and still happy with my note2. I get good reception home and work with 3 and EE, was on Giffgaff a few years ago but reception with them was useless at work.

Would like
PAYG or 30 day contract
200mins
200 txt
2+ gig of data
tethering.

Currently pondering

Life Mobile (owned by EE). £15 gives you unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 6gb data. Hopefully tethering

Three All-you-can-eat data, 200 minutes, 12 Months £17.00* a month. Has tethering, downside is 12 month contract.


Any other options I should be looking at?

[virtuo]

If I ever see Three in a comparison I know straight away which is going to be the best choice, I was a bit worried about jumping on a 12 month contract with them but haven't had a single issue and will be sticking with them for the forseeable future. Does Life give you 4G in that price?

I think Three have shorter rolling contracts on everything (or they did when I last looked) but you pay a small premium for that.

[Flibb]

Think I will stick with three, I do tend to use a lot of data streaming music at work, and being bale to tether would be very handy.

[jas88]

I'm with Three - switched from a 500Mb/month plan to unlimited a few months ago, mainly to get tethering options (there's a 4Gb/month limit on tethering, despite the plan itself being unlimited for phone usage). That limit's something to bear in mind if you were planning to stream the music by tethering, rather than by running Spotify (or whatever) on the phone itself - go the second route, you're unlimited and fine; tether for the same task, you'll burn through the 4Gb cap fairly quickly.

(Quite why one way of playing Spotify has a limit and the other doesn't always seemed a bit weird and unfair to me - in this case, it really is literally the same stream of data, from the same place, to the same device, just handled differently after arrival! Still, it seems to be a better deal than most offer, so can't complain too much.)

[watercooled]

The thing with tethering some people abuse it. Like, really abuse it, and it's not affordable for the ISPs to support that.

Mobile use, as in stuff through your phone is less likely to consume huge amounts of data because of the nature of the usage. However with tethering, some people will try to run their whole house off it and download terabytes per month which both costs the networks more money than they make, and significantly adds to congestion in the area around those users.

I think the unlimited mobile plus capped tethering is a pretty good option overall. It's far better than phone-only packages where you can't use tethering as a backup at all.

As usual, the few ruin it for the many.

[george1979]

The thing with tethering some people abuse it. Like, really abuse it, and it's not affordable for the ISPs to support that.

Mobile use, as in stuff through your phone is less likely to consume huge amounts of data because of the nature of the usage. However with tethering, some people will try to run their whole house off it and download terabytes per month which both costs the networks more money than they make, and significantly adds to congestion in the area around those users.

I think the unlimited mobile plus capped tethering is a pretty good option overall. It's far better than phone-only packages where you can't use tethering as a backup at all.

As usual, the few ruin it for the many.

That's exactly what it is. I see people who will run thru 150Gb tethering in a month and cause issues for other users in their area. They cost the network not just in terms of their usage but also in the negative experience for other users in their area - i.e. compensation other customers for poor speeds or even allowing them to leave their contracts early. They're often the ones with the cheek to complain and seem to think it all works by magic - I like to call it 'in this day and age' syndrome...

[Smudger]

Virgin Media do unlimited texts and calls plus 2gb data for £12 a month, 30 day rolling. They piggy back on EE so coverage should be same as you currently have.

[scaryjim]

Three All-you-can-eat data, 200 minutes, 12 Months £17.00* a month. Has tethering, downside is 12 month contract.

I went on this last December (when it was only £15!). Not one jot of a problem since. Tethering is limited but if you only use it for checking emails and not downloading steam games that shouldn't be an issue. Whatever phone you're using, you can set up Windows 8/Windows 10 to regard it as a metered connection which means it won't automatically download updates and stuff through it.

I know it's a bit of a thead bump, but if you hadn't made a decision yet I figured that might help