In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

Is this rise high enough to break anyone out of contract?

Talk Talk did say in the email you had the right to leave with no penalty but when i looked round my options TT were still the cheapest and i haven't had any real problems with them in all the years i have been with them so i stayed.

TBH like any business we cannot expect them to keep the prices the same year after year i can remember when we had usage caps back in the day (i think my first was 10GB) but there were no HD streaming services back then so these usage caps were not a big problem, the last time i looked we used 250GB in a month and i imagine that is not going to get less as 4K streaming etc becomes the norm, we cannot expect ISP's to keep taking the hit prices will have to rise.

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Sat 22-Jan-22 13:49:24)

In reply to a post by smouty:

How do they justify increasing phone bills though?
How are those people using more data?

Probably because GOVT WFH , and a consequence of furlough that we are ALL going to have to pay for in Higher taxation Which is wrong IMO as many did not get furloughed why should they be made to repay what others got? BT will blame the rising cost of electric

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Very pleased with both .

I suspect even Three will put prices up this year, due to the cost of the electricity they need to power their network and masts increasing a large amount.

Three are trying to escape their "underdog" status, explains the massive deployment of random new transmitter mono-poles, but the strategy is still not contiguous. They don't compete on nationwide coverage with either Vodafone or EE, or even O2. The customer services is legendary awful (and also located in India), and they don't support eSIM or the cellular smart watches.

It is very strange for a network owned by CK Hutchison Holdings, one of the planets wealthiest companies.

I thought it a pity that Three and O2 were not allowed to merge. Combining the networks would have lead to better coverage.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

I've contacted CS several times about retention prices or upgrade deals since late 2018 and had no trouble at all with the reps. Often English accents and always very pleasant and helpful. Perhaps you are seeing just the usual; the unfortunate people who have had a bad experience maybe long ago and post about it.

Sadly my experience is more direct, myself with a mobile broadband contract in 2019, and friends whom needed the porting code (PAC) before the new Ofcom regulations came in. For one of them the CS team reduced them to tears, and trying to add an authorised alternative adult so someone else could help was almost impossible. Even the shop in town couldn't help. I'm really pleased you had a much better experience.

I (unfortunately) work in the IT industry, and often have to call software vendors call centres whom are located in India. I know first hand the difference in quality, India call centres CAN work well if they are FUNDED correctly. For Three UK (owned by CK Hutchison) to not fund the call centre sufficiently is inexcusable and I voted with my wallet to not use their services.

You may remember my very long thread when I ditched my AAISP landline and several others decided to go with the same service as I. I think I've only seen one, maybe two, on here regretting it. Which isn't to say they haven't moved to a higher priced product from another supplier for other reasons having validated the principle cheaply.

There is nothing wrong with using a company if the product works for you, the only rule with anything using radio communication is to TEST in the location required BEFORE signing any long term contracts. Easy with PAYG SIMs.

In my town if I lived next door to the Morrisons supermarket I could get 5G from Three at 400 to 500 Mbps download, with 20 Mbps upload. But the rest of the town gets around 20 to 30 Mbps download with 4 Mbps upload on 4G. The daftness of Three's very expensive deployments is unique. No other mobile provider has 5G in this town, but EE manages 200 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload in my front room, which means in theory I have a backup should my Virgin Media service fail.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 22-Jan-22 18:31:23)

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I thought it a pity that Three and O2 were not allowed to merge. Combining the networks would have lead to better coverage.

It would have been interesting if they had been allowed, and VERY expensive, as Three have a long standing location and network link sharing agreement with EE, and O2 has a site sharing and engineering agreement with Vodafone. Unpicking these two relationships just to *stand still* in terms of coverage would have been a nightmare.

But the UK regulators are convinced we need 4 operators having dropped from 5 back in 2010. The Germans however have dropped from 5 to 3 and see that as optimal for a slightly larger population. I actually think we probably should have gone the same way.

In reply to a post by aidanh:

BT provides a road network, if it costs them too much money to transit someone else's road or their road is falling apart for some reason, then that is the real issue here.

That network has a regulated lack of congestion. Without the ability to allow it to congest somewhat at peak times the only alternative is to upgrade the road which isn't free. Imagine how much more it would cost if traffic jams couldn't exist relative to expenditure now, and add 40% more vehicles each year?

In reply to a post by tommy45:

In reply to a post by smouty:

How do they justify increasing phone bills though?
How are those people using more data?

Probably because GOVT WFH , and a consequence of furlough that we are ALL going to have to pay for in Higher taxation Which is wrong IMO as many did not get furloughed why should they be made to repay what others got? BT will blame the rising cost of electric

Please rant about this in The Park.

£20 seems a lot unless it is for a phone contract as well.

SIM only with many providers is a lot cheaper. The provider we use is £7 / mth for unlimited mins and texts and 3GB data.

You might find you could get better prices from BT for mobile which is the same network.

Thanks broadband66
This is a sim only deal.
And you're right it is too much. What surprised me was that they (EE) flat out refused to reduce the price. We would have been happy for a reasonable reduction.

So they're going to lose a customer.
I've got a Vodafone 99p. sim here and we'll be trying it out for reception tonight and tomorrow.