25 replies to this topic

[Confucious]

My contract expires on Tuesday and after numerous phone calls I ended up getting my PAC code.
I don't use many minutes and texts now so Flext35 is a bit OTT and I have an iPhone and have got a PAYG SIM with unlimited web access provided I top up £10/month which gets me 300 texts and £10 of calls a month - more than enough for me at the moment and I thought would be ideal.

Yesterday I put my O2 SIM in my phone - it has HSDPA so I thought I'd be OK.

Wrong! The max speed I have got is about 580k but I can run the same test (it uses speedtest.net) again and get 29kbs (that's download not upload!) with T-Mobile I once got less than 600kbs but I used to get 1200kbs but recently have been getting 1400-1800kbs and if I did get a 'low' reading it was a one off.
I got a colleague at work to try the speedtest as well (on O2) and we were both getting very erratic readings - he once got over 900kbs but most were either ~580 or ~29kbs and this was on full 5 bar signal.
3G coverage on O2 seems poor round here as well - we wnt out yesterday evening and were down to 2G.

I think I'm going to have to phone T again and the best they offered me was to extend my existing arrangement for another 18 months.

Oh well, £20.51 for Flext35 (old version with free voicemail but they've just put up the price of 08 numbers and I don't get to text abroad) and W'n'W Plus is not bad I suppose.

Is it just me, but when I look at http://www.mobiholic...fs/#entry989095 the cheapest plan I see is Flext 40!

[agent.m]

Confucious, on Apr 4 2009, 10:58, said:

My contract expires on Tuesday and after numerous phone calls I ended up getting my PAC code.
I don't use many minutes and texts now so Flext35 is a bit OTT and I have an iPhone and have got a PAYG SIM with unlimited web access provided I top up £10/month which gets me 300 texts and £10 of calls a month - more than enough for me at the moment and I thought would be ideal.

Yesterday I put my O2 SIM in my phone - it has HSDPA so I thought I'd be OK.

Wrong! The max speed I have got is about 580k but I can run the same test (it uses speedtest.net) again and get 29kbs (that's download not upload!) with T-Mobile I once got less than 600kbs but I used to get 1200kbs but recently have been getting 1400-1800kbs and if I did get a 'low' reading it was a one off.
I got a colleague at work to try the speedtest as well (on O2) and we were both getting very erratic readings - he once got over 900kbs but most were either ~580 or ~29kbs and this was on full 5 bar signal.
3G coverage on O2 seems poor round here as well - we wnt out yesterday evening and were down to 2G.

I think I'm going to have to phone T again and the best they offered me was to extend my existing arrangement for another 18 months.

Oh well, £20.51 for Flext35 (old version with free voicemail but they've just put up the price of 08 numbers and I don't get to text abroad) and W'n'W Plus is not bad I suppose.

Is it just me, but when I look at http://www.mobiholic...fs/#entry989095 the cheapest plan I see is Flext 40!

yeah just noticed this as well

not very good. but they d have the solo price plan which is sort of pay as you go unlimited internet  sim only


http://www.t-mobile....rd/pay-monthly/

[Confucious]

The problem with all the 'free' unlimited internet is it is W'n'W Std which is 3G only - not HSDPA.

[agent.m]

Confucious, on Apr 6 2009, 19:00, said:

The problem with all the 'free' unlimited internet is it is W'n'W Std which is 3G only - not HSDPA.

yeah you're right

[Metoo]

agent.m, on Apr 8 2009, 13:42, said:

QUOTE(Confucious @ Apr 6 2009, 19:00)
The problem with all the 'free' unlimited internet is it is W'n'W Std which is 3G only - not HSDPA.

yeah you're right

Makes sense to me. The only regular requirement I can see for full HSDPA is when tethering, and that's against the T&C of all standard flat rate contracts.
If you're not doing that, why (apart from bragging) do you need 7.2Mbps on a mobile phone?
IMO it's just number chasing for numbers' sake.
It has no major benefit to the actual day-today user experience of using your phone, in fact it harms it - as HSDPA is even more of a battery hog than 3G..

[Confucious]

You are kidding, aren't you?
3G is just too slow on my iPhone. HSDPA makes it fly