Three is awesome. I actually tether through my phone at work because getting ~10Mbps to myself over 3G beats sharing a 10Mbps leased line amongst about 20 offices. I always have YouTube or Twitch on in the background, etc, and never run into any problems. I pay something like £20 a month.
To balance though, historically Internet access options were not good.. I was on dialup until about 2003, and then pretty horrific 1Mbps DSL until at least 2009 or so. The UK has done a great job at catching up somehow.
* The monthly contracts (and higher value pay-as-you-go top-ups) come with "Feel at Home" roaming -- in about 12 countries worldwide you can use your inclusive minutes, texts and data with no international roaming fees, i.e. you get that all-you-can-eat data overseas. Countries listed include the United States; on one recent 2-week trip to the USA I was able to use my iPhone for data as if I was at home with no added charges.
* British phone tariffs do not charge you for receiving text messages.
* The all-you-can-eat is capped (small print) at a "fair usage" of 25 Gb/month. Tethering is disabled while roaming overseas on "feel at home", but not prevented at home.
* If you buy a smartphone from Three, they'll unlock it at any time, for free, on request.
* In non "feel-at-home" countries they'll give you 24 hours' data (capped at 500Mb) for £5. Not as good, but better than typical international roaming fees (at £0.5/Mb in the EU and up to £3/Mb outside the EU).
Those of us who are used to this kind of cell service boggle in amazement about how backward the US carriers are.
The final irony? Three is pretty backward and expensive compared to what Estonians get from their cellcos ... the UK is by no means the best world-wide, it's just a handy point of reference.
There is no 25GB limit on the AYCE. I've pushed nearly 500GB one month tethering on 4G (my old apartment had very slow upload and could get about 20mbit up on 4G - great for server restorations and bulk data transfers) and many times over 25GB and have never got a letter.
From the Three 'small print': So in essence there is a limit of how much data you can actually consume which is up to 1000GB. All this means that you can have absolute peace of mind and enjoy all the internet you need on your smartphone, without worrying. Basically, the limit is about 1TB/month.
> The all-you-can-eat is capped (small print) at a "fair usage" of 25 Gb/month.
I can tell you that this is wrong, I've personally had months where I've used 100GB+ of data over 3G and had no problems (this is on a £15 top-up). I don't know if they throttle or not, I've never really noticed it.
> Tethering is disabled while roaming overseas on "feel at home", but not prevented at home.
I didn't get my handset from Three but I've been able to tether in Paris and used at least 2GB when I was there.
The limit only applies when roaming with Feel at Home (free roaming). Data is capped at 25GB, and I think calls are capped at 300 mins and texts at 3000, too.
When not roaming, there is no limit on data:
> "Does all you can eat data come with any limits? The limit is how much your device can consume – if you were to actively use data or the Internet on your phone every second, of every day, in every month (and we would be worried if you were !!!!) you would, subject to the current traffic management requirements (which vary from time to time), use up to 1000GB per month. So in essence there is a limit of how much data you can actually consume which is up to 1000GB. All this means that you can have absolute peace of mind and enjoy all the internet you need on your smartphone, without worrying."
I've always gone with the no-contract plans. I pay $35/month for the same phone and unlimited service that one of my family members is paying $100/month for. Really I don't see the point of the contract plans.
I got my nexus 4 for 'free' on a contract and even if I bought it outright and got on the cheapest plan with roughly the same features, I would've only saved $5 a month. 5 * 24( 2 year contract) is only 120 so by going on a contract I saved at least $100 on the cost of my phone. If you are smart you can save money by going on a contract.
I don't think you researched well enough, 5$ saving is nothing. tell us which plans you were deciding between.
For example Straight Talk, is 45$ / month, everything unlimited. And you can use either AT&T's coverage, either T-Mobile's or Verizon's (and their phone too).
And that's for everything unlimited, you can find cheaper if you don't need unlimited.
Well I'm in Canada so straight talk is unavailable. As far as I know there is no provider that offers unlimited plans for everything at a reasonable cost. I'm with Fido and my plan is $45/month with 200 mb data, 200 weekday minutes canada-wide, unlimited evenings and weekends, unlimited SMS and MMS. The cheapest plan they offer that includes data is $39/month. The cheapest plan period that isn't prepaid that I've seen from any canadian provider is $35/month. So if I spent $10 less a month which is $288 for 2 years, it would just barely cover the cost of the phone and I wouldn't have any data either. So in the best case I wouldn't save any money by buying my own phone.
Can you share what plan you use? From my experience no-contract plans usually have some issues like no off network roaming. Maybe this isn't a deal breaker, but it is a different level of service.
I would think that one of the "several factors involved" may dwarf regulation: area.
The UK operators have 94,000 square miles to cover while US operators have a little over 3.1 million, just in the lower 48. Obviously no single carrier is ever going to cover 100% of either country (and in the US in in particular they don't come even close), but the simple size of the problem in the US drives their infrastructure costs way up.
If AT&T only had to cover the state of Michigan (96,000 square miles) they could probably do it for less than $60 a month...
I agree that we don't have nearly enough competition in the US, but let's not pretend that a few more "harmless" laws will make everything rosy and perfect.
Well that doesn't explain why it is cheaper for me as a Brit to roam using my UK contract in the US than it is to take out a US contract. When I'm visiting America I am literally paying less than you folks for your stuff.
I can go to US and use unlimited data for no extra charge.
That's not true in general. UK phone companies love to charge astronomical international rates when they can get away with it. Only EU maximum charge limits have capped these.
For example, in an EU country like Greece, I can phone a UK number for a maximum of 18p/minute. If I happen to travel near the border with Turkey and connect via one of their networks, there's no regulatory maximum price and the cost jumps to 69p.
It doesn't matter about it being true in general - the fact that any UK networks allow you to have unlimited data in America for no extra cost on a contract that is much much cheaper than US contracts shows that the US carriers are screwing you - I pay £15 a month (no contract - I can stop whenever I want) and that includes unlimited data in America.
I can go to US and use unlimited data for no extra charge.
There is a charge; it's part of your contract package. I'm sure it's a fantastic deal and for a traveler who uses mobile data in the US, it makes a lot of sense. But Three aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. The charge for this data is part of your phone plan. Three (or another network) could provide an alternate package that didn't provide 'free' US data for a lower monthly cost.
You don't get it, the cost of my contract is much much cheaper (we are talking 25% of the price) than any unlimited US contract and yet it includes the same stuff.
I'm pretty sure the regulatory thing is actually not even true. The article author was probably thinking of broadband.
Probably the real reason for the lower price is that all networks have pretty similar coverage, so the only thing to pick between them is price. Maybe there is also the fact that PAYG was very popular here in the past, so consumers just expect lower prices. Oh, and we don't have to pay the subsidy-tax for unlocked phones.
As cstross mentions in another comment talking about Three it seems to be part of a big "Fell at Home" marketing campaign. With no other obligation to do so, I would simply assume they saw it as a good opportunity to stand out in a crowded market.
The all-you-can-eat nature seems to include voice as well as data abroad, but I haven't seen any mention of international calling. Calling another UK number I'm sure works as normal, but presumably you still pay the regular rates if you call a US number? They certainly do if they call you. If you're just visiting the states for a week or two that's not nearly as big a deal (use the free local calls from the hotel phone to order pizza), but longer trips (school or business) would still involve meeting a larger group of people and become cost-prohibitive (for both parties).
Combined with the limited number of customers who would be traveling internationally at all and likely the ability to get some sort of bulk-purchase agreement with whichever carrier in the US they use and they're probably just happy to eat the (relatively) limited expense to get the added customers.
Like I mentioned in another comment, it also plays heavily into our hatred of limits. If I want to skip off to NYC for the weekend, I don't want to have to figure out what to do about my phone first! The "don't worry about it, we've got you covered" approach is probably working out really, really well for them, even for the large majority of people who never travel... because they might, one day. In the meantime they keep paying every month.
Three offer unlimited roaming data in the US. They're not under any regulatory obligation to do so, and they presumably must be paying the network providers. I live in Canada right now, which is even worse than the US in this respect, and it is infinitely cheaper for me to use my British SIM in the US than it is for me to use my Canadian one. That's kind of nuts.
You're not taking into account population density. Russia's population is very heavily concentrated in relatively few areas... Not much need to blanket all of Siberia with cell towers.
Same as the US surely? There's huge swathes of the US which has very limited cell coverage. Looking at a map, the majority of OR/ID/MT/ND/SD doesn't have cell coverage, not even 2G. Apparently more than 83% of the US population lives in urban environments, compared to 73% in Russia. In fact, it's more than the UK too (80%).
To some extent, definitely. But America has always had the "open road" attitude. I think it's a lot more likely for a family to take a road trip to the Grand Canyon one summer, across several of those states, than for a Russian family to take a road trip to... hell, I can't find a city in the middle of Siberia on Google Maps, but you get the idea.
I'm sure the Russian roads have coverage too. You're not going to cover places where there is no need to. Many of these areas will not have seen people in decades in Russia I'm sure.
Anyway, it's a moot point. Rural areas are cheap to cover. Stick a macrocell up, microwave some backhaul in from another tower (until you hit the nearest fibre line) and jobs done. Cities are much much more expensive - costs more to put the masts up, need many many more masts and complex frequency allocations, buildings blocking the line of sight, etc. I'm sure that rural capex/opex is a very small percentage of Verizon/AT&Ts budget compared to all the thousands of new 4G sites they're putting up in urban areas.
So far as I can tell, cell phone technology works best in third- or fourth- tier cities like Rochester, NY. The worst cities for cell phone coverage are cities like LA, NYC, Washington DC, etc.
In very dense areas they have to put in more cells, deal with the fact that there is a lot of metal around, multi-path propagation, more difficulties getting towers sited, etc.
In rural areas I think the cost has more to do with topography than anything else. In a mostly flat area that has an occasional mountain that's taller than anyone else, you can space towers far apart. In the Appalachian mountain region, however, you have a network of ridges that are all about the same height, so you'd need to run power and fiber to the tops of all the ridges - you might as well just run FTTH to all the homes, except you couldn't charge $10 a GB for FTTH.
No it wouldn't, because that's not the only area your plan covers. We all acknowledge that we are averse to limits of any kind (hence unlimited calling, even if we only ever use a couple hours a month!), and that includes area restrictions.
Imagine if your cell phone required that you pay some outrageous roaming fee or get a special temporary pre-paid package if you drove out of NYC into NJ.
I would take an LA only plan if it were cheap. I think a lot of people would. And why do roaming fees have to be outrageous? How about reasonable ones?
I've always found it funny that it is cheaper to use my UK monthly rolling contract in America (free roaming yay) than it is to have an American contract - completely bizarre.
Actually, the original mobile network licences issued back in the '80s required that the licence-holders sell airtime to any service provider who asks for it, at the same price and conditions offered to the service providers owned/controlled by the licence-holders. That paved the way for MVNOs.
Italy is considered close to a third world country BUT as i can see it provides cheaper and better connectivity.
No contract, unlimited data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts (but no phone): 10€/month.
On a 30 months contract with everything unlimited and an iPhone 5s will costa about 35€/month. Which means abput 50$/month.
I'm paying 20€/month in France, for unlimited calls (to France and a large part of the world) and texts as well as 3 GB data (20 GB over 4G, but my phone can't use that).
A phone isn't included in the contract (the contract can be stopped anytime) but my provider (Free) also sells phones on credit, say an iPhone 5s for 49€ one time payment and then 16€/month over 24 months.
That makes a close equivalent of the US contract, for 38€/month or about 50$/month.
Also, in reality I'm paying 4€/month for this contract for the first 12 months because of a promotion back in June.
I'm paying, in Portugal, ~100€/month for a plan that includes 100mbps fiber, land-line and service for four cellphones. National calls are unlimited. Data over fiber is unlimited. Data over cellphone is limited to 200MB per cellphone (add-ons to extend data usage exist). Cellphones themselves are not part of the plan.
That's a rather common practice to fight natural monopolies - here in Slovenia the largest operator (which was merged together from a landline / mobile / ISP) has to provide it's own networks (landline / FTTH / mobile) to competitors at a market price.
The article is wrong. It's for fixed line broadband.
Though there are a lot of cell/network sharing agreements in the market (to various extents - some are actually cell roaming but some are just sharing backhaul/fibre/the physical towers):
O2 and Vodafone
Orange and TMobile (merged to form EE)
Three and TMobile (may or may not include ex-Orange sites, not sure).
That kind of legislation usually is only relevant for the "incumbent" (because the rules usually state "if you have more than x% of the lines .."), i.e. the ex-monopoly provider who didn't build anything. It was build by tax payer money and then given to them.
giffgaff is a great example of this, a very small company that piggy-backs on the O2 network, giving really cheap tarifs. http://giffgaff.com/goodybags
It's worth noting that the billing methods for US and the rest of Europe are very different when it comes to voice. For instance, it costs between 4c/min to 26c/min to call a UK mobile phone. In the US it's < 1c/min. Outside the US, the caller of a mobile phone is generally the party footing the bill for the entire call.
The more interesting question I have is why would it cost 26c/min to call a mobile phone? And since each carrier prefix may have a different cost, how do consumers keep all these prefixes / carrier rates straight in their heads?
Edit: I'm looking at flowroute, plivo, and twilio.
Not correct and I don't know where you get those prices from. OFCOM has regulated termination charges (http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/mtr/statement) in the UK. Right now they are at 0.8p/min but it is likely they are going to rule to drop them to below 0.5p/min.
Edit: these are wholesale prices, so there will be some overheads for whoever provides it to end users, but the crazy termination fees in the UK are long gone.
2.65c/min on Plivo? The other prefixes are more 'premium rate' numbers, not mobile numbers. That's about 1.5p/min.
Considering Plivo charges 1.2c/min for US numbers as a benchmark, the difference between US and UK numbers is 1.45c/min or... 0.88p/min, exactly the wholesale cost pretty much. So I think it is working.
The maximum that a UK mobile company can charge for an international call in the EU is 18p/minute, around 29c. Same-country calls are naturally cheaper.
Another thing to consider is that off-plan call rates are certainly high, but since you could get a better plan for less than the cost of an off-plan call, you won't be making many of them.
Generally all carriers are covered by any plan minutes so you don't have to worry about differing charges. Ironically though, in the UK, calls to freephone numbers are mostly not included in plans so they do cost money...
To balance though, historically Internet access options were not good.. I was on dialup until about 2003, and then pretty horrific 1Mbps DSL until at least 2009 or so. The UK has done a great job at catching up somehow.