In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is that 24GB per month or for the whole year, averaging 2GB?

The latter, of course. It works out at about £3 per GB or £7.50 per month, whichever runs out first. Probably the best value you'll find anywhere. IME, EE 4G is the best by a significant margin.

However, if anyone can find a link to the 3 alternative at £22 per month, that would be interesting. Right now I'm paying £20 per month for 15GB on EE

Edited by hoopla (Tue 19-Apr-16 16:19:26)

In reply to a post by gordon_k:

Does anyone know of any mobile operator that does allow tethering on PAYG?

EE allows tethering on their PAYG voice SIMs. They also do PAYG data SIMs which fundamentally do tethering - I used to have one in my MiFi.

Voice:
http://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones

Data:
http://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-data

I have not had a problem tethering with a 3 PAYG Sim. It is not allowed in the T&C, but for me it has worked. I have just done it when on holiday in the UK staying in rental places that don't have broadband.

Yes, I looked into the EE ones, but unfortunately their PAYG doesn't seem to be what I mean by PAYG - i.e. it's buy a block of data which expires after 30 days, rather than pay by the MB for the data you use...

That's interesting. Once I've been using it for a month or two I reckon I'll give it a test run, see how it goes...

OK, for anyone coming to this thread interested in PAYG (i.e. pay-by-the-megabyte) SIM-only tethering, my findings as of April 2016 are that sadly it barely exists.

Good pay-by-the-megabyte deals are available from 3 mobile (1p per MB) and also TalkMobile & The People's Operator (both 2p per MB) but none of these three companies allow tethering on their PAYG products (officially).

The one exception seems to be GiffGaff, who do allow tethering on their PAYG, but whose price is now 5p per MB.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with info. My plan for my emergency broadband is to get a GIffGaff SIM (which comes with £5 free credit on your first top-up) and top it up with a £5 Gigabag which gives 500 MB.

The question of "true PAYG" vs "Blocks of data that expire" is a tricky one to decide. It really depends what your regular usage is, and what your emergency usage would be.

In reply to a post by gordon_k:

I'm a relatively infrequent mobile user, who uses SIM-only PAYG.

One thing though - I see they don't allow tethering on this service.

For our mobiles, we use EE PAYG, and have pretty low demands right now.

I started using their £1 per week data pack with 100MB allowance (so roughly 500MB per month), but using their bonus packs, I get to boost this by an extra 50MB after each 3 months.

The pricing ends up at around 1p per MB (similar to 3's 3-2-1), if I use all of the 100MB, though the pack also comes with a few minutes and texts too. Once each boost gets added, the cost obviously reduces (again, if you use all of the data).

I'm finding 100-150MB per week is enough for me for regular use. Teenage daughter needs more - but 200MB per week seems to cover it. The wife finds 50MB closer, but wanted more texts, so uses a slightly different weekly pack (only 10MB allowance), with a 50MB data boost.

With the boosts from 3-6 months, these EE SIMs are now acting cheaper than our previous Three ones were, and the coverage is better.

Tethering is allowed, but I only use this for browsing from a tablet, and again, infrequently during the week.

I hardly ever use tethering, but have found it extremely useful on a couple of occasions when my landline broadband has gone done temporarily, and I've needed an emergency backup service.
( My studio is in my house, so I need a broadband connection here for my work. )

Ah, for emergency backup when the landline fails, I use a separate solution; more of that later.

On the above PAYG packs, I could choose to add blocks of data for emergency use for work:
- 100MB for £1 (lasts 7 days)
- 500MB for £3 (lasts 7 days)
- 500MB for £5 (lasts 30 days)
- 1GB for £7.50 (lasts 30 days)
- 3GB for £15 (lasts 30 days)

As it would be work usage, it would be almost a no-brainer to use these blocks, depending on the length of outage.

But for more efficient emergency usage -as it would include my wife's work and the kids' connections too - I have a "MiFi"-style device (Huawei e5372), an external antenna (MIMO) and then make use of specific EE MBB (mobile broadband) SIMs. They are still a form of PAYG, but data-oriented.

The cheapest way to use the MiFi device has been to buy one of the pre-loaded SIMs from Amazon; with 6GB, they tend to be priced around £15 (0.25p per MB). They're valid for 90 days once you start to use them, but we tend to have one pre-purchased, unused, ready for such an emergency. And they tend to be cheaper than the 24GB/annual pre-loaded SIMs.

Once used up, the SIM can be discarded, and replaced with a new pre-loaded one, or topped-up and used with add-ons similar to the ones above. On an MBB SIM, the add-ons tend to be a little more expensive, but you can get larger ones.
- 500MB for £3 (lasts 1 day)
- 1GB for £10 (lasts 30 days)
- 2GB for £15 (lasts 30 days)
- 4GB for £20 (lasts 30 days)
- 10GB for £30 (lasts 30 days)
Compared to these, a new SIM, pre-loaded with 6GB, lasting 90 days is quite a good deal.

This setup also tends to then be used by the family for holidays. We do go through the blocks of data then.

In reply to a post by gordon_k:

Yes, I looked into the EE ones, but unfortunately their PAYG doesn't seem to be what I mean by PAYG - i.e. it's buy a block of data which expires after 30 days, rather than pay by the MB for the data you use...

Ok, you want AAISP's data SIM:
http://aa.net.uk/telecoms-mobile-data.html

That would be just the thing, except that the SIM seems to come with a £2 + VAT per month fee.

So if my broadband doesn't go down this year, I'd be £29 out of pocket for zero data.

In reply to a post by gordon_k:

That would be just the thing, except that the SIM seems to come with a £2 + VAT per month fee.
So if my broadband doesn't go down this year, I'd be £29 out of pocket for zero data.

If you suspend the SIM on the control panel you don't pay the £2 - and it may take a bit to re-enable.

Not sure you can get free standby solutions with no cost ; someone has to fund the infrastructure.