24 replies to this topic

[PaulOBrien]

EE have finally announced their 4G LTE tariffs for the UK and they make for, well, amusing reading to be honest!

The tariffs are pretty simple - they all come with unlimited calls and texts and varying amounts of data, priced as follows:

SIM only - 12 month contract

• 500MB: £21
  
• 1GB: £26
  
• 3GB: £31
  
• 5GB: £36

With phone plans - 24 month contract

• 500MB: £36
  
• 1GB: £41
  
• 3GB: £46
  
• 5GB: £51
  
• 6GB: £56

Bargain eh? Maybe not. Other interesting points...

• When your data allowance runs out, the Internet will stop working completely until you add a top up bundle
  
• Any remaining allowance doesn't roll over to the next month
  
• A £5 option lets you use your minutes / texts abroad
  
• If you have an Apple iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy SIII or HTC One X that isn't EE LTE compatible, you can swap it for a LTE enabled version for £99

EE have also published prices for their Fibre Broadband products, mobile broadband and business tariffs.

You can read full details at http://ee.co.uk/plans but as far as I'm can tell, the pricing makes EE completely irrelevant in the 'real world' today. Right?

Click here to view the item

[Johnrg]

Far far too expensive...

And after looking at their FTTC costs, they've even priced themselves out of that market too; Plus.net, Sky and TalkTalk are all cheaper!!

I've been on Orange since 1998... I think its time for a change!!

[mark2410]

hmm, chocolate teapot me thinks.

[hecatae]

with phone plans - 12 month contracts:

add £10 a month to the 24 month contract prices

[jchamier]

There is something wrong with their Mobile Wifi plans - why are the 24 months plans more expensive for 2GB of data than the 18 month plans?
http://ee.co.uk/plan...obile-broadband

and I wonder if all the plans have been based on AT&T and Verizon in the US who are known to being the most expensive you can find?

[3shirts]

Once the other networks launch their 4G services and it has reached a few more areas I expect to see these prices tumble.  Right now EE have just destroyed the opportunity they had to pick up early adopters.

[le_lutin]

I agree that those are crazy prices, but according to The Register, you get a free bolt-on if you take 4g:

" For starters, those signing up can choose one of three bundles: Music, Gaming or Live TV.
That's either a free subscription to music service Deezer for groove-inclined mobile users, two games a month for the roaming button basher, or access to EE's exclusive telly service for travelling gogglebox addicts. The latter provides streams of up to 19 channels including Eurosport and Cartoon Network.Adventure Time on your phone… mathematical."

Now, if you were going to get deezer anyway (a tenner a month), you could effectively take 10 pounds off the tariffs above, no? Mightn't sound so bad.

Still not for me though (i've got the smallest pockets you've ever seen)

[Matchstick]

I wonder how many customers EE has to sign up to cover the rollout costs and what they'd do if (when ?) they don't get them ?

[The Soup Thief]

Obvious strategy is obvious...
They surely couldn't be confident that they'd meet the pent up demand for 4G.  If they started up the service as all you can eat for 20quid a month or even 500gig for a tenner a month people would flood to it, their (untested and potentially shaky) network might struggle to cope and fall over leading to a PR disaster
They've priced it at the point where they know they're gonna get a trickle of corporate and wealthy buyers who probably won't overburden the network, then when they see how their systems cope, they can drop the prices and lure more customers.
Think of it as a soft launch.  The price point and low data caps act as their only throttle on demand

It sucks for consumers like us lot (price sensitive and informed - read, tight) but it works for them as an interim measure.  Don't fret, when they've seen they can handle it and ironed out the inevitable wrinkles they'll crank the price down, if for no other reason than to spoil it for the new entrants to the market, who will be forced to launch cheap, with big demand leaving their networks open to strain and resultant media furore
Hang back and enjoy 3G - 2G's fine for me most of the time, kinder to my battery too

[Chewy11]

Well from what I can tell these prices reflect the price difference I see in LTE and HSPA+  data plans  in North America.
No LTE on Nexus? No problem for me. I don't need mobile data faster than my home WIFI...plus I cant really afford it.  On top of the fact LTE service is only available in select urban markets.
I suspect most LTE users have expense accounts for cell bills.

Me: Rogers in Canada, 3 years contract, 2 lines share : 400 daytime local minutes, unlimited local evenings(from 6pm)  and weekends calling, unlimited texts, and a shared 2 GIGs a month(of 2G, 3G) oh and 35 cents a minute for any long distance...145$

[Zarch1972]

I'd read elsewhere that BT Wi-Fi would also be included, but don't see that mentioned on the EE site?  So not sure if that is true or not?

[rferrett]

There will always be people prepared to pay the w*nker factor price to be an early adopter.

They will fleece loads of those on two year contracts early doors, then when 3 and O2/Vodafone release their 4G prices EE will drop theirs.

I think they have at least until April at the earliest when 3 are expected to launch of exclusivity.

[flibblesan]

This is all very very silly. It was bad enough to see the published download speeds for EE being no quicker than the DC-HSPA that Three are rolling out, and the true-life speeds being no quicker than HSPA+ on Three, but now EE have truly screwed up with the plans. By having such poor speeds and low data limits, EE will be putting off the heavy data users (as I suspect is the intention). This then leaves low to moderate users who want a 'faster' service. However I cannot see these users jumping from existing 3G services since the deals are so much better and the speeds are just as good. The only people I can see signing up to EE are those that have more money than sense or just want to increase dick size by having a 4G symbol on their phone.

[RenkliArif]

Man, you Brits are spoiled
When I first saw thece prices (I live in The Netherlands) I was like "OMG THAT'S CHEAP"

[Davidoff59]

Think I will stick with giffgaff cheers

[unrandomsam]

Fiber Broadband - That is total nonsense.

http://fiber.google.com/about

$120 - 1000Mb/s Internet / Nexus 7 / Google TV / 2TB NAS / 1TB Google Drive / More channels than I get from Virgin. (Not HBO though unfortunately).

^^ Is Fibre Broadband. (Even if the last bit is Gig ethernet it doesn't matter).

It is also less than I pay Virgin Media (For something far worse).

[unrandomsam]

3 Is the reason we didn't totally stagnate upto now for mobile data.
We are not as bad as the Verizon / AT&T situation but were getting there.
The only way things improve for the customer is when there is new players in the market or the government decides we want something.

(Our country decided we want to install phone lines everywhere - it was beneficial don't see why we don't just install fibre everywhere. (I would just say forget the EU we are not restricting ourselves in this way companies are messing around not doing a proper job).

We are getting entrenched with no telcos innovating properly.

(But we still have polititions saying we want "world class internet" we won't get it from BT / Virgin or EE.)

BT has loads of dark fibre as well.

Best way to get out of a recession is investing shedloads into infrastructure (or manufacturing but I think we have stuffed that too far for it to be a good idea).

It will have to be done eventually anyway might as well just do it now and don't worry about the financial implications. (With a Fiat currency that you control you can never go bust).

The only reason our power / gas network is reasonably decent is because it wasn't left to private companies to sort it out. (It will deteriorate though over time though).

Plus with big national infrastructure companies the young can be given decent apprenticeships. (Where they actually learn a decent amount of different valuable things as opposed to the absolute bare minimum to do a dead end job).

I don't see why the UK as a country thinks it is a better idea to nationalise a bank rather than infrastructure. (Even our post office sucks now compared to the nationalised ones). Somehow the German post office manages to get stuff to my door faster than the UK one. (With the last bit done by Royal Mail in both cases). Hong Kong somehow manages to send stuff across the world for less (including the item) than just the cheapest postage here.

All we seem to be doing (as a country) is making things harder and harder to ever fix.

[unrandomsam]

Even more it is not even their own fibre network it is just reselling BT's stuff. (Hence the reason you need a BT landline).

[b4da55]

unrandomsam, on 23 October 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Even more it is not even their own fibre network it is just reselling BT's stuff. (Hence the reason you need a BT landline).

Same for every other company.

[tillaz]

lol, think i will stick with HSPA+ £5 for unlimited internet @ 600kbs