Smarty £18 Unlimited Data

I have joined smarty (3) from plusnet (ee) and was shocked overall - rubbish speed, very poor high ping, kept disconnected from internet. [censored] from Smarty as they offer 4G unlimited data for cheapest £18 a month. AVOID IT at all cost!

Plusnet (ee) 2 / 3 bars signal 4G (12GB data, unlimited texts, unlimited calls, 30 days) @ £10

download speed 62Mbps
upload speed 26Mbps
ping 23ms

Smarty (3) 1 / 2 bars signal 4G (unlimited data, unlimited texts, unlimited calls, 30 days) @ £18

download speed 2Mbps
upload speed 4Mbps
ping 59ms

Very disappointed with smarty as I am going to port same number back to plusnet next few days.

Did you miss this thread which identifies the slow speeds problem with Smarty and offers at least one way to resolve the issue?

Quite a few people have already posted about poor performance of Smarty on here. Pay such a low price and it is going to be rubbish. Even 3 at a bit higher price have had performance issues on the unlimited data products.

Not only your and GonePostal's comments, but EE is overall almost certainly the best in the UK. Whether PN is quite as good I have no idea.

You could have tested first with a £1 spend on a Smarty SIM plus adding some data for £5-£10. Try before buy! Don't like it, take it out and bin it. Put the Plusnet one back in.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Not only your and GonePostal's comments, but EE is overall almost certainly the best in the UK. Whether PN is quite as good I have no idea.

It will depend on the load on your local mast, which varies in areas. EE has the largest capacity, but they don't deploy it all everywhere (for cost reasons). So worth experimenting.

Uaing a second tier, virtual network (MVNO) and expecting high speeds is bad judgement, they are second tier to be CHEAP.

The real networks are: Vodafone, O2, EE and Three.

The virtual operators are here -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom...

I did say "overall". Not always or everywhere .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

You could have tested first with a £1 spend on a Smarty SIM plus adding some data for £5-£10. Try before buy! Don't like it, take it out and bin it. Put the Plusnet one back in.

Yes never thought of that! Plusnet (ee) are the best coverage in my area always getting 62Meg down and 26Meg up but Plusnet will never offer unlimited because of ee

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Yes never thought of that! Plusnet (ee) are the best coverage in my area always getting 62Meg down and 26Meg up but Plusnet will never offer unlimited because of ee

Only Vodafone’s mobile data is unlimited. All the others (EE, O2, Three) has a FUP. I think EE’s is the lowest at 600GB per month. O2 around 650GB and Three is higher.

Edited by jchamier (Wed 28-Oct-20 13:30:11)

In reply to a post by ian72:

Quite a few people have already posted about poor performance of Smarty on here. Pay such a low price and it is going to be rubbish. Even 3 at a bit higher price have had performance issues on the unlimited data products.

I know EE got 60GB on 4G/5G but way too expensive at £30 a month for pay as you go with no contract! or Unlimited Data on 4G/5G at £37 a month for 2 years contract but I heard someone saying EE does have data usage 1TB per month. Not sure if their speed are good as PN or much the same but maybe ee are fastest speed in network for streaming NOWTV, Netflix, Amazon Prime