EE Pay As You Go Sim 5G

I am disgust in EE. They won't sell pay as you go sim for 5G told me you have to buy monthly contract sim 12 or 24 months contract for 5G. I don't want any contract.

Surely they can't do this?

https://www.1pmobile.com/

Since when did any company have to sell something they don't want to?

The UK market seems to have an abundance of offers and deals with a 12 month or more contract but there are nowhere near enough interesting offers with no contract whether pay as you go or a month to month contract..
I don't see EE being reprehensible in this respect. 5G is nowhere near me though.....so of no real interest. Sorry to not be more sympathetic Max.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Surely they can't do this?

4G wasn’t on PAYG for a few years after launch.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

https://www.1pmobile.com/

Not sure if this is still relevant, and why can't you buy from a retail store ?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2021/10/some-...

While there is probably a commercial aspect to EE making this decision, consuming data at 5G speeds doesn't make a huge amount of sense when paired with a PAYG rate.

Plusnet Mobile sell EE Data Sims
I have a 50GB for £15 per month

EE is the only 4g signal I can receive in my village

In reply to a post by bures:

Plusnet Mobile sell EE Data Sims
I have a 50GB for £15 per month

EE is the only 4g signal I can receive in my village

How is that relevant to the OP's complaint about 5G?

Been tested Samsung Galaxy A53 5G with smarty £10 for 60GB data

Very impressed with that fastest 5G https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/8256920942

In reply to a post by tommy45:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

https://www.1pmobile.com/

Not sure if this is still relevant, and why can't you buy from a retail store ?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2021/10/some-...

We have two 1pmobile sims obtained last year and do not see these £2.50 deductions. From my obviously time limited experience they do seem to be an excellent company with an efficient customer service team too.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I am disgust in EE. They won't sell pay as you go sim for 5G told me you have to buy monthly contract sim 12 or 24 months contract for 5G. I don't want any contract.

Surely they can't do this?

Why can't they do it? They not compelled to sell anything to you.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Been tested Samsung Galaxy A53 5G with smarty £10 for 60GB data

Very impressed with that fastest 5G https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/8256920942

i have been with smarty for a couple of years or more and they are fine, I don't know about 5G as i don't have 5G and to be honest I am in no rush to get it, but smarty does provide 5G for the same price as 4G.

Smarty is good value as long as you can get a good Three signal, which is far better than it used to be.
5G on a mobile will make little difference if any to be honest.

The thing about 5G is that it is for data, not voice or SMS. Very few (no?) networks offer PAYG data at anything like a sane price.
If you were paying 20p per MB on 5G, get a decent connection and you could run up a bill of more than £700 in a single hour. Even if you could afford that, I'm not sure their billing system would manage it well.

I have unlimited minutes, messages and data on my phone, and 5G at no extra charge where available. £22 per month, though it may have a small annual increase soon.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

I have unlimited minutes, messages and data on my phone, and 5G at no extra charge where available. £22 per month, though it may have a small annual increase soon.

I think you’ve missed the PAYG in the above thread. (I went for 200GB of 5G data, which is effectively unlimited for my usage and its £25/month, with a different network to your .sig).

I often wonder about the objections to Three for the average punter, like myself, as opposed to those with commercial needs.

My mobile history was Orange in the 1980s for business use, then switching to O2 and porting on cost grounds after retiring and being on O2 LLU. I forget what happened following my wife's death but I ended up with a new EE bundle in emergency in the far south west of Cornwall soon after my wife died, as it was an O2 not-spot.

That EE was ditched at the end of its two year contract, as it was basically never used after that initial fortnight.

The came the Three Black Friday offer that I explained at length at the time in 2018, where over a couple of months ny landline broadband then the line it self went.

No regrets. Three telephone phone support has always first class in my experience, including today Easter Saturday on behalf of a friend who had lost their phone with an identical SIM contract. (Providing his only broadband though he does have a Pulse8 landline).

He hadn't clue what to do so I went over there and I checked out the paperwork and the Three website for instructions. Told him what to say and guided him through the four levels of 5-7 options each level on his landline. No fuss though there was a strange problem at their end but that's another matter which I sorted quickly.

Once that was cleared up it took under five minutes for the rep to block the original SIM and arrange a replacement with the same number as the blocked one, to be sent in 1-3 working days.

Now I have to find the best phone for him. The lost one was my old Huawei P10 Lite, which even now is quite a decent bit of kit.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

I often wonder about the objections to Three for the average punter, like myself, as opposed to those with commercial needs.

Mostly around my area its the lack of 4G when you drive out of town (dropping back onto 3G) and in town the 30 Mbps 4G unless you are outside Morrrisons with the new “pole of wonder”. This lack of consistency isn’t worth the subscription per month when the competition (Vodafone or EE around here) is much more consistent for similar prices.

My mobile history was Orange in the 1980s for business use, then switching to O2 and porting on cost grounds after retiring and being on O2 LLU.

Well Orange only started in April 1994, and I bought in Nov 1994. Before that you’d probably have been on Analogue Cellnet or Vodafone 😁

No regrets. Three telephone phone support has always first class in my experience, including today Easter Saturday on behalf of a friend who had lost their phone with an identical SIM contract. (Providing his only broadband though he does have a Pulse8 landline).

Very lucky, the Three customer service is often slated on various (not here) forums as being hard to understand. Three have the lowest number of customers and I won’t be taking out another subscription with them personally.

Now I have to find the best phone for him. The lost one was my old Huawei P10 Lite, which even now is quite a decent bit of kit.Yes, Huawei isn’t really a sensible choice anymore given the well published issues, perhaps look at the Moto or OnePlus ranges.

"Well Orange only started in April 1994, and I bought in Nov 1994. Before that you’d probably have been on Analogue Cellnet or Vodafone"

I've just spent a fair while searching old files and cabinets, plus google searches, and so far not able to prove an Orange number before 1994. But I am absolutely sure.

It would have been when Orange was a French-owned company. Though it must have been 1989 at the earliest. It was a flip-phone, and my memory says Motorola, so the only candidate is this:

In 1989, Motorola upped the status symbol ante by releasing the first "flip phone," the MicroTAC 9800x. At the time of its release, the MicroTAC was the lightest and smallest cell phone on the market. Improvements in battery technology and circuit miniaturization cut its general size and weight, and the key innovation of making part of the phone fold up while not in use made it almost perfectly pocketable. For the first time, a cell phone could also completely hide in a purse.

Though I didn't have a purse. Or an intergalactic spaceship.

From Carphone Warehouse with an Orange Business SIM.

All business invoices and credit card bills for that long ago gone of course. Though I might have other records that might be findable another day. I think I still have the SIM in an old phone, now with the number updated for the 07 range of course.

Not that it matters to the topic .

I've recently brought a couple of Oppo A54 5G phones for relatives, you can often find them for around £120 almost new on auction sites. They are dual sim, 5G and I've tested them working on VoLTE and VoWiFi on both 3 and EE. AfAIK they all are unlocked even the EE boxed/branded ones. Might be worth a look.

Ummm. My memory seems to be playing tricks with the date of my first mobile. I was sort of forced into getting one by a business need, and I can't see how that could have been before 1990. But for it to be as late as 1994 also seems unlikely. More digging needed, but real life is busy for most of today.

Thanks for that adrenalize . I've been looking at OPPO on and off for a while, for as and when my One
Plus 8 Pro needs to go for whatever reason. Particularly as OPPO owns OnePlus and seems to be the lead player on the Android skins now.

It's great to have a direct recommendation here, as external user reviews can be fairly random in their reliability. Even "Best of 202n" sites aren't fully objective.

I got great offer deal with smarty 5G for unlimited data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts for just £16 a month through uswitch offer deal.

Some day I get 800Meg down and 110Meg up - not bad at all.

Dabbled with 1p myself as even in an area that isn't great for EE coverage I was getting 10/12 Meg down (Samsung A52 5G) but unless you use one of their new bundles (wasn't available when I tested) your credit will be gone in no time.

Gone back to giffgaff for now and am waiting for O2 5G to reach here as giffgaff offer 5G access with or without their bundles but I do use the 8 quid bundle myself.

Pay Monthly users get the new features first as companies would rather you signed up to something that gives them a guaranteed income from you for a period of time which is understandable from a business perspective.

PAYG was targeted at those who couldn't enter into a credit agreement such as being below 18 or not havig s good credit history.

Edited by techguy (Sun 17-Apr-22 15:09:59)

In reply to a post by techguy:

Pay Monthly users get the new features first as companies would rather you signed up to something that gives them a guaranteed income from you for a period of time which is understandable from a business perspective.

Even more so when you look at some of the costs of buying the antenna panels and radio kit for a mast site (3 sector) and the ground works and communications, I've concluded you don't get much change from £1m.

Network operators can invest in the future, with funding from the markets, but they need regular income to do so. PAYG even with packs, doesn't provide regular income. A great way to sell extra capacity that is already paid for, but doesn't help for investing in new technology & replacement mast sites. Which is why PAYG users were the last to get 4G, and now 5G. Three being the odd-one-out as they are trying to capture people from other networks.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 17-Apr-22 17:04:18)

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Ummm. My memory seems to be playing tricks with the date of my first mobile. I was sort of forced into getting one by a business need, and I can't see how that could have been before 1990. But for it to be as late as 1994 also seems unlikely. More digging needed, but real life is busy for most of today.

You were likely with Microtel later Hutchison Microtel. They created the Orange brand and migrated customers over to Orange from ‘94 onwards. So you were with Orange in the sense of their owners legacy network.

In reply to a post by gary333:

You were likely with Microtel later Hutchison Microtel. They created the Orange brand and migrated customers over to Orange from ‘94 onwards. So you were with Orange in the sense of their owners legacy network.

Microtel wasn't a network that transmitted anything, it was a consortium that pulled together the funding and marketing and branding etc, to hide the consumer brand before they wanted to go live. Very clever and it worked.

Oftel licence days tell you when things launched, original version on the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130205065028/http://li...

Currently here:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/histor...

Hutchison's Orange launched on 28/Apr/1994 with 50% UK population coverage. Beating one2one that had launched in late 1993 with only London area coverage. Both on PCN (1800 MHz GSM) at significantly lower cost (£15, or £25/month) and buying from network owned stores.

I bought an Orange phone in Nov 94, and still have the same number with the original area code .

Edited by jchamier (Sun 17-Apr-22 17:30:58)

No, it's me that is probably wrong with the date. I want to sort it for my own peace of mind but I have many urgent things to do, with finding a new phone for the friend who lost his. A complete technophobe who was entirely unable to work a feature phone, with several people having tried to show him over a few years.

I ended up getting him a low end Samsung when it became necessary for his mother's carers to get in touch at any time. He was able to handle that after a few mess-ups with the Contacts lists and resultant SMS to the wrong person, but as a phone and with the onscreen qwerty keyboard he was OK.

I was paying for the PAYG, but as posted earlier passed my Huawei P10 Lite to him and got him to take out the same Three deal as mine. Hie mother had long since died but his usage had gone up along with his confidence. Plus he inherited a small amount plus the house so could afford it.

He could do with having the new one working by Friday lunch at the latest, but that could be tight.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by gary333:

You were likely with Microtel later Hutchison Microtel. They created the Orange brand and migrated customers over to Orange from ‘94 onwards. So you were with Orange in the sense of their owners legacy network.

Microtel wasn't a network that transmitted anything, it was a consortium that pulled together the funding and marketing and branding etc, to hide the consumer brand before they wanted to go live. Very clever and it worked.

Oftel licence days tell you when things launched, original version on the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130205065028/http://li...

Currently here:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/histor...

Hutchison's Orange launched on 28/Apr/1994 with 50% UK population coverage. Beating one2one that had launched in late 1993 with only London area coverage. Both on PCN (1800 MHz GSM) at significantly lower cost (£15, or £25/month) and buying from network owned stores.

I bought an Orange phone in Nov 94, and still have the same number with the original area code .

Although this was after my time (so I wasn’t working there when this happened), I was led to believe (I.e. told when working for rival call connections limited an SP of cellnet), that Rabbit was the name of Hutchison Microtel cellular offering and that they closed down towards the end of 1993 / early 1994 and customers who wanted to continue with Hutchison were migrated to the new “modern” network called “Orange”.

Edit: That’s an impressive time for your number. When I started we still had customers with 0802 and 0850 mobile numbers, in fact TACS to GSM was still underway. My number was a Genie (SP 283 if there’s any old BTcellnet people around here) number so quite a bit later than yours .

Edited by gary333 (Sun 17-Apr-22 23:52:30)

In reply to a post by gary333:

Although this was after my time (so I wasn’t working there when this happened), I was led to believe (I.e. told when working for rival call connections limited an SP of cellnet), that Rabbit was the name of Hutchison Microtel cellular offering and that they closed down towards the end of 1993 / early 1994 and customers who wanted to continue with Hutchison were migrated to the new “modern” network called “Orange”.

Rabbit wasn't cellular. It was a "Call Point" system. You bought an expensive cordless digital phone for home use, and you could take the phone out with you. Yet you could only make calls when you were close to a Rabit sign, you couldn't receive. It didn't catch on. I saw it on Tomorrows World and at the time everyone thought it was a "portable phone box".

Edit: That’s an impressive time for your number.

I know a handful of people whom have numbers for the same duration. I remember the Genie brand from cellnet, wasn't that about the time of WAP ?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I remember the Genie brand from cellnet, wasn't that about the time of WAP ?

Yep, early 2000's

Ermmm?
My first number (definitely Orange) started with 0973, but had to change to 07973 when the UK system changed.

So the same, but not the same .

The six-digit unique number started 160.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

My first number (definitely Orange) started with 0973, but had to change to 07973 when the UK system changed.

The 0973 area code was assigned to Orange PCS Ltd and only started in 1994. Myself, members of my family, and some friends still have that code. The 7 was added when Oftel/Ofcom decided that "talking digits" was sensible, and we ended up with the same number of telephone digits as countries over three times our size, not necessarily a good thing. Back in the days when sitting in London, calling Edinburgh was expensive, but calling Brighton was cheap, mobiles provided a single rate.

The six-digit unique number started 160.

The first group (April 1994) started 2xxxxxx then they moved to 3xxxxxx and then back to the 1's later on, as they were apparently reserved for "golden numbers" for those that wanted to pay much more money for memorable. Similar to 0973 973 973 or 0973 123 123 etc.

Edited by jchamier (Mon 18-Apr-22 11:11:29)

Post deleted by gary333

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by pluralist:

My first number (definitely Orange) started with 0973, but had to change to 07973 when the UK system changed.

The 0973 area code was assigned to Orange PCS Ltd and only started in 1994. Myself, members of my family, and some friends still have that code. The 7 was added when Oftel/Ofcom decided that "talking digits" was sensible, and we ended up with the same number of telephone digits as countries over three times our size, not necessarily a good thing. Back in the days when sitting in London, calling Edinburgh was expensive, but calling Brighton was cheap, mobiles provided a single rate.

The six-digit unique number started 160.

The first group (April 1994) started 2xxxxxx then they moved to 3xxxxxx and then back to the 1's later on, as they were apparently reserved for "golden numbers" for those that wanted to pay much more money for memorable. Similar to 0973 973 973 or 0973 123 123 etc.

I remember back in the day at cellnet (well I say cellnet there wasn’t really a cellnet rather just a collection of multiple service providers and systems under that brand name), we had a screen where you could search for golden numbers, but as it was a fully text based interface based on IBM mainframe it was very clunky to find numbers as you were just presented by page after page of just numbers to tab through. People would check for fun when on downtime to see what best combinations were.

Anyways, we had bronze, silver, gold & platinum numbers. However, some of the numbers were reserved as VIP and were not available at all, at the time they had names attached, but these were not customer names, and no-one really knew why. Some of these were the best number combinations possible, whilst others were just relatively basic combinations. Not entirely sure why they were visible in the pool but totally excluded as non of the documentation mentioned their propose.

Wonder what happened to them as in 2004 the legacy system was decommissioned and I don’t think these older pools of numbers were ever made available in the new system (as it didn’t have this capability) and from then on it was managed by spreadsheets to show which number was which, and what differentiated each category. It’s likely some of those brilliant original cellnet VIP combinations were never allocated, as I think even in the underlying network system they had been reserved under a non existent service provider.

Maybe mine was a 1 because of being a business contract? It was just a bog standard assigned number at Carphone Warehouse as far as I know. Or maybe third-party sales were from the reserved range.

AIUI they can't still have the 0973 code as 09 is the premium rate call numbers now. The Orange/EE ones were automatically changed. There would have to be some weird and wonderful and nonsensical interception and diversion internationally if you called them on 0973 nnnnnn.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by gary333:

Although this was after my time (so I wasn’t working there when this happened), I was led to believe (I.e. told when working for rival call connections limited an SP of cellnet), that Rabbit was the name of Hutchison Microtel cellular offering and that they closed down towards the end of 1993 / early 1994 and customers who wanted to continue with Hutchison were migrated to the new “modern” network called “Orange”.

Rabbit wasn't cellular. It was a "Call Point" system. You bought an expensive cordless digital phone for home use, and you could take the phone out with you. Yet you could only make calls when you were close to a Rabit sign, you couldn't receive. It didn't catch on. I saw it on Tomorrows World and at the time everyone thought it was a "portable phone box".

Edit: That’s an impressive time for your number.

I know a handful of people whom have numbers for the same duration. I remember the Genie brand from cellnet, wasn't that about the time of WAP ?

Yeah, I remember telepoint systems as a kid, good to be able to after all these years know rabbit was just that. Although, we did have customers in the system where rabbit and Hutchison references were made in the notes. Our training made out you were offered to “migrate” to the new Hutchison network (what became orange) or you could move to cellnet or Vodafone straight away, thus why I recall migration and why some might think they had been with Orange longer than they had existed.

This article from 1993 seems to suggest the same https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/hutchiso...

Yeah, I think Genie was around 2001, it was actually something dealt with by BT if memory serves me correctly rather than the existing cellnet service providers (at BT “first” in Doncaster maybe?). I also think the Genie billing system (called Geneva) was the test bed for the later front end system that became the dominant “one to rule them all” o2 billing system for consumers (Companion UK or CUK). Dise being the business side for anyone interested (originally being the Martin Dawes service provider).

At the time the service provider I primarily worked with couldn’t do two APNs so you were up a creak if you wanted WAP and MMS, I mean come on you could just use the “fax” line we set you up to send a picture, no, lol.

Edited by gary333 (Mon 18-Apr-22 12:59:04)

Could have been business easily. Or reserved for sale through third parties. Lost in history and yes everyone’s codes were changed on the second “Phone day”. The first was the 01 for fixed line.

So 11 digits for a U.K. phone number. Same as USA when the hidden 0 or 1 is included. Yet we have 69 million people and they have 300 million. Must be some mistake 😂

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I got great offer deal with smarty 5G for unlimited data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts for just £16 a month through uswitch offer deal.

Some day I get 800Meg down and 110Meg up - not bad at all.

Which begs the question, why are you getting your knickers in a twist about this ?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Which begs the question, why are you getting your knickers in a twist about this ?

mind your own business, this is my thread.

I had a Nokia 2410 (with the pull out antenna) when orange launched, the had the 1 hour swap out for faulty handsets then. I had my phone swapped a few times!

I think my original number is still assigned to me, I put it on the Virgin deal that Orange matched at the time. Credit never expired, and I get a statement occasionally from Orange (yes Orange not EE). Number is 07973 119 XXX.

Went to T-Mobile, then EE, probably for the last 15 years, just about to port to O2, volt benefits are too good to refuse, monthly mobile bill at home for 5 lines reduced from £60 to £45, with much more data/roaming etc.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Which begs the question, why are you getting your knickers in a twist about this ?

mind your own business, this is my thread.

See the first reply to your Opening Post.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

mind your own business, this is my thread.

All very unnecessary Max.

In reply to a post by Philce:

I had a Nokia 2410 (with the pull out antenna) when orange launched, the had the 1 hour swap out for faulty handsets then. I had my phone swapped a few times!

The original Nokia Orange I think was 2140, but it was an 1800 MHz network customised version of a retail handset sold on the 900 MHz GSM networks in the rest of Europe. That swap out service was amazing, I used it a couple of times.

https://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/nokia/nokia_214...

I think my original number is still assigned to me, I put it on the Virgin deal that Orange matched at the time. Credit never expired, and I get a statement occasionally from Orange (yes Orange not EE). Number is 07973 119 XXX.

Impressed if that is still going, as the french Orange company wanted their brand back, so EE/BT had to move everyone with Orange branded billing over to EE. Those on T-Mobile branded are okay, a friend of mine still has a working PAYG T-mobile SIM. The Virgin OVP was a nice idea, not sure it made sense for the networks though!

Edited by jchamier (Tue 19-Apr-22 20:16:22)

Ref my first post about a friend who had lost his mobile (and thereby broadband), and my follow-up about progress.

As reported in one of those links on Saturday we got his SIM blocked and a replacement with the same number to be sent in 1-3 working days. Yesterday, (Monday), he agreed to my recommendation on camera grounds (important to him) of a OnePlus Nord 2 5G at £247 from Amazon. I ordered it and it arrived middle of Tuesday afternoon.

I also after much searching found the Samsung A2 I had bought him years ago, and as hoped and expected it still works and holds this contact list as of June 2020. "The Future is bright". But not "Orange" .

Thanks to those who made suggestions for replacements. Basically both of us felt a second-hand one could be dodgy especially if not a professionally refurbished one, and although there were several lower priced ones in the OPPO and Xiaomi ranges he takes a lot of photographs and this stands out above the cheaper alternatives that are all pretty impressive in several other respects.

Now just waiting for the SIM.

Edited by pluralist (Tue 19-Apr-22 23:59:40)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

https://www.1pmobile.com/

I have ordered 1p mobile sim 10GB for £10 a month but question is, can I change once per month with from 10GB to 50GB in next month for £15 a month or have to stay on the selected tariff 10GB for £10 a month?

I am going to ditch smarty as it not good.