T-Mobile/EE Sims

[sammyc]

Have always had T-Mobile sims, & (leaving aside why EE packs &c seem to be 10 times more complicated than necessary & than T-Mobile ever was) I have a quick question -

Given that a T-Mobile sim is fine in an EE phone, from what I gather the services for T-Mobile don't cross over, ie you can't put a T-Mobile booster onto an EE sim; only an EE top-up.

So in theory if I were to put a T-Mobile sim with part of a payg booster remaining into an EE mobile, would it continue to use its allowance without problem but you would be unable to renew it?

[DanceswithUnix]

Have always had T-Mobile sims, & (leaving aside why EE packs &c seem to be 10 times more complicated than necessary & than T-Mobile ever was) I have a quick question -

Given that a T-Mobile sim is fine in an EE phone, from what I gather the services for T-Mobile don't cross over, ie you can't put a T-Mobile booster onto an EE sim; only an EE top-up.

So in theory if I were to put a T-Mobile sim with part of a payg booster remaining into an EE mobile, would it continue to use its allowance without problem but you would be unable to renew it?

In theory, if you put a T-Mobile sim in an EE phone it should work. If you top up the sim, it should get topped up.

T-Mobile and Orange merged to become EE, so they are all the same network. If your phone is locked to one of them, a sim from any of them should work fine.


Having said that, I have migrated my daughter's Orange pay as you go and my EE contract onto Three pay as you go. She used to get through about 70p per day (once the "free" 1GB was used up) and that is now down to about 3p per day on Three. I haven't been on it for long, but my contract was £10 per month with heavy discounting from the EE retention team (it started as a T-mobile contract), that looks to be down to about £3 a month on Three pay as you go as I only use a couple of hundred meg a month and send a lot of texts.

EE charge about £9 to unlock a phone if you have a decent on with them. My daughter had an awful Samsung where £9 seemed like god money after bad, so I got her an unlocked Moto E. The rate she was getting through topups before, long term it should pay off quite fast.

So if you are looking at getting a new phone, I would go for something unlocked. I got my daughter's phone from Tesco where you can either buy locked to Tesco or for a little more get it sim free. The man at the Three shop I talked to recently said that the phones they sell are all unlocked, in which case you could get a Three phone and use your T-mobile Sim in that until the money ran out. I think if you want to keep the phone number you need a bit of credit on the phone to phone customer service for a PAC code though, at least I did on Orange paygo.

[sammyc]

T-Mobile and Orange merged to become EE, so they are all the same network. If your phone is locked to one of them, a sim from any of them should work fine.

That's interesting, as I was reading things like this in answer to 'can-i-put-an-ee-sim-in-a-locked-tmobile-phone': [this from 2014]

'When EE launched they had a choice of using Orange or T-Mobile's systems. They decided to use T-Mobile's systems and with that came the use of the same network identifier used in a phone to control SIM locking. So generally you shouldn't expect a phone that was locked to Orange to work with an EE or T-Mobile SIM without first being unlocked. The opposite is also true, a phone locked to EE or T-Mobile will generally not accept an Orange SIM.'

Anyhow, I have seen an error in my question but I also left a few bits out so -

My current phone is T-Mobile payg, & I tend to buy a 6-month internet booster. I now also have an EE locked phone (passed on to me so choice of unlocked not an option). I have most of a 6-month booster left on my original phone so I will need to either 1) move that T-Mobile sim into my EE phone or 2) overlap with internet on a 2nd sim, if I want access to the internet sooner on the new phone but decide to leave my existing sim where it is. For various reasons I will still use both phones in the future, the undecided bit is to what degree I have internet on both.

The EE phone currently has an EE sim; but an EE add-on (which I confusingly referred to as a top-up, sorry) is not as good value as a T-Mobile booster, so I would probably get a T-Mobile sim for the new phone.

So I was partly wondering if my existing T-Mobile sim would definitely be ok in the EE phone purely in terms of using my remaining internet booster. But also (here's my error) - I also half-thought that because I can't put a T-Mobile booster onto an EE sim and vice versa, maybe I couldn't renew the booster when it ends, if I do move my current T-Mobile sim into the EE phone. Which I could presumably, because it will still be a T-Mobile sim, duh.

Thank you for the helpful answer.

[DanceswithUnix]

That may have been the case when the merger first started, I think the idea was that the Orange masts got merged into the T-Mobile masts. As a T mobile customer at the time I started finding nearby Orange masts started giving me a signal, though where there was overlap I think they turned some off. So I *think* it is all one network now, old Orange phones roaming onto T-Mobile though my daughter's phone seemed to be new enough that it was native EE from what I could see.

I was on contract on T-mobile so not up to speed on the internet boosters. Is it really a 1GB fair usage limit on the £20 internet booster? T Mobile certainly used to measure on the low side which is nice and perhaps they still do, but my reason for switching was that Three is only 1p per MB. So you buy a £10 top up, ignore the boosters as they are a rip off, you get free 150MB extra to use in the first month, and after that the £10 is worth 1GB of data which doesn't expire. As long as I don't blow it on 3p texts first

When your next £20 booster comes up, I would look into spending £8 to unlock your phone and £10 on a Three sim. Unlocking can take weeks though, despite it costing money (another thing that annoyed me about EE, when Tesco and Three unlock for free) so if that interests you plan well in advance.

OFC if you know you can't get a Three signal, then apologies for rubbing in the slightly inflated costs you have to pay. A friend can only get O2 where he lives, but you aren't going to move house over phone contracts are you

[sammyc]

I get T-Mobile and Orange signals on my existing phone mostly, & EE occasionally (I think, but couldn't swear in a court of law.)

I can't back up if it's 1gb at first glance, I actually had 500mb in my head. EE is worse again, 500mb for £5 a month. In practice I never get near that as I mainly browse rather than stream &c, as my existing phone doesn't have the capacity to do much in that line. New 'fancy' Android (by my standards ) does, & therefore I anticipate using more.

I'm interested in what you say about Three, questionable if I understand it correctly & fully, how often do you mean you top up £10? as it stands I pay for the booster as it's what I use the most, and top up a very stingy amount here & there for texts & calls. Oh and Three signal not a problem apparently.

[DanceswithUnix]

How often? Depends how long it takes you to get through a tenner's worth of data/text/voice. I think for me that is going to be about every 4 months. It seems that on each top-up you get 150MB of data applied for a month, so if you top up a fiver at a time that is better value but more of a faff so up to you where you think the hassle vs value cutoff is.

On three you top up £10, that money doesn't expire, and the basic rates are decent so you don't have to bother with add-ons (what Three call Boosters).

So if I topped up £30, I would probably be set for the next year at my current usage. I am on wifi at home and work, but use it for maps, car navigation, web browsing when out and about so usually under 300MB/month.

[sammyc]

Right, I'm with you. all very useful info, thanks - much appreciated. As you are using wi-fi at home that would certainly make a difference.. I guess the sensible thing to do would be to establish what I am likely to use if I start using this phone in a significantly different way to my other one, & take it from there.

[DanceswithUnix]

Right, I'm with you. all very useful info, thanks - much appreciated. As you are using wi-fi at home that would certainly make a difference.. I guess the sensible thing to do would be to establish what I am likely to use if I start using this phone in a significantly different way to my other one, & take it from there.

I you set the phone to only update apps when on wifi, and don't use it to stream media then probably about 200MB to 300MB per month. Teenagers with a YouTube habit struggle to stay under 1GB