GiffGaff

[Guest mrbloggs]

I just did a test on watching 2 minutes of HQ youtube using watchdog to measure bandwidth = 14MB of data. There must be some people on giffgaff who are seriously takin the p***, and streaming content for hours each day, using up hundreds of MB. I know they dont have any stores, or have to pay call centre staff, but how do they do it, when O2 restrict to 500MB?

[Guest veehexx]

law of averages?

14mb of data is about 3weeks of data for me. (~700kb/day in data). wifi or laptop is used for youtube.

[Guest SqueakyG]

Giffgaff currently have a fair usage policy of 100MB per day. Their system flags users who use more than 100MB for more than two or three days in a week. These users are then warned. Continued use of more than 100MB a day can get their data usage terminated.

Right now data is free to everyone. They've set a new final date of April 1st as the date when data won't be free any more. When this happens, the "unlimited" data in Goodybags will have roughly the same fair use policy described above.

[Guest ninzor]

Luckily my contract is "unlimited".Up to 1 Mbit/s and limit is higher than 100gb per month.

500mb a month sounds sucky. :huh:

Edited March 1, 2011 by ninzor

[Guest Azurren]

Luckily my contract is "unlimited".Up to 1 Mbit/s and limit is higher than 100gb per month.

500mb a month sounds sucky. :huh:

It is to low for smartphones.. Which was why T-Mobile was such a good deal :)

[Guest Gibbo501]

It depends how you use your phone. I never exceed my Orange 100Mb monthly limit.

[Guest Simon O]

Giffgaff currently have a fair usage policy of 100MB per day. Their system flags users who use more than 100MB for more than two or three days in a week. These users are then warned. Continued use of more than 100MB a day can get their data usage terminated.

Right now data is free to everyone. They've set a new final date of April 1st as the date when data won't be free any more. When this happens, the "unlimited" data in Goodybags will have roughly the same fair use policy described above.

Got a source for the unlimited data changing to a 100mb fair usage as I can find no mention on giffgaff about this.

[Guest swukjay]

its not changing flib thats only if you dont have a £10 goodybag unlimited is staying

[Guest SqueakyG]

Got a source for the unlimited data changing to a 100mb fair usage as I can find no mention on giffgaff about this.

Having looked into it just now, I was probably wrong, apologies. It seems that Goodybag data is truly unlimited with no FUP at all. People without a goodybag have data that is subject to an informal FUP of 100MB per day. That was my error.

I wish I could find the thread I was reading before -- giffgaff have such active forums, it would be impossible to find -- but I remember a thread where one of the main Giffgaff people showed exactly how they measure their informal 100MB FUP. He even showed a screenshot of their statistics, which highlights days when a user goes over 100MB, and flags the user if it happens more than twice in a week. It is then at Giffgaff's discretion whether to give them a warning.

[Guest Swimmerboy]

I wish I could find the thread I was reading before -- giffgaff have such active forums, it would be impossible to find ...

This one? http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Updates-N...Policy/m-p/2088

(Found by searching for "giffgaff data warning" :huh: )

[Guest mrbloggs]

My question hasn't been answerewd!!!

I googled this, but the details are hard to find.

Who owns and controls these 3g networks, do giffgaff, orange, o2.... etc pay a third party for bandwidth?

giffgaff have no shops, or have to pay call center staff, how does this equate to being able to offer their customers 100MB a day when O2 only give 500MB a month.

[Guest aequalszero]

It's probably to do with the fact that what the consumer is charged for a data plan doesn't match what it actually costs them to provide that data. Giffgaff is an experiment, really. Albeit one that seems to have found success.

[Guest Swimmerboy]

It's probably to do with the fact that what the consumer is charged for a data plan doesn't match what it actually costs them to provide that data. Giffgaff is an experiment, really. Albeit one that seems to have found success.

Also factor in that Vodafone, O2, etc all have to purchase or lease 'showrooms' in city centres where the prices are stupidly high. They've also got to employ a load of support monkeys to man the phones in another office somewhere.

GiffGaff have no shops, minimal staff due to the 'Community-Led' approach and so there's a lot less overhead for them to worry about. All they've agreed to with O2 is that they get to use their network and in return will pay X per minute of calls and Y per MB of data.

They also get billed as a whole for data, so I'd imagine that you'll find 20% of their customers have old handsets and/or use little or no data, 30% are 'light' users that perhaps use <10Mb per day, 30% are 'Medium' users that use 10-30Mb per day, and the other 20% are heavy users that use 30MB+. If GiffGaff have done their sums right (and they seem to as the prices haven't gone up) then as someone else stated the law of averages is in GiffGaff's favour - in effect the heavy users are supplemented by the light users.

[Guest Vansphone]

For me, and I accept my phone usage is unusually small GiffGaff is not that attractive (although I am waiting for a SIM to be delivered so I will try it out)

A £10 GiffGaff package last one month even though you may not have used up all the money on calls. For £10 you get 250 minutes of calls, then extra calls cost 8p a minute, unlimited text. Free internet access and GG to GG calls last three months.

Therefore to maintain the ability to make phone calls with internet access will cost £120 per year

I am on the old 3 PAYG package so for a £10 voucher I get free 3 to 3 calls, 140MB of free internet access, 600 free text. I think phone calls cost something like 14p. It I want an extra 1GB it costs £5.00 However, and this is important to me, the unused balance roll on for as long as it takes. This means I buy about £90 of vouchers a year.

So my point is, that in view of their tiny operating costs compared to the big operators, I don't think GiffGaff is that cheap. My guess is that they must be making a much higher profit per customer that the larger companies

Edited March 2, 2011 by Vansphone

[Guest Swimmerboy]

For me, and I accept my phone usage is unusually small GiffGaff is not that attractive (although I am waiting for a SIM to be delivered so I will try it out)

A £10 GiffGaff package last one month even though you may not have used up all the money on calls. For £10 you get 250 minutes of calls, then extra calls cost 8p a minute, unlimited text. Free internet access and GG to GG calls last three months.

Therefore to maintain the ability to make phone calls with internet access will cost £120 per year

I am on the old 3 PAYG package so for a £10 voucher I get free 3 to 3 calls, 140MB of free internet access, 600 free text. I think phone calls cost something like 14p. It I want an extra 1GB it costs £5.00 However, and this is important to me, the unused balance roll on for as long as it takes. This means I buy about £90 of vouchers a year.

So my point is, that in view of their tiny operating costs compared to the big operators, I don't think GiffGaff is that cheap. My guess is that they must be making a much higher profit per customer that the larger companies

Horses for courses as they say.

I like to play about on Facebook, download updates and games from the app store (as well as the occasional Rom upgrade at ~90Mb each) and sync work email, personal email and calendars so 140MB of data would only last me a week or two. That said, I only send around 300 Texts and use 60 minutes of calls a month so it probably evens itself out.

[Guest SqueakyG]

My question hasn't been answerewd!!!

I googled this, but the details are hard to find.

Who owns and controls these 3g networks, do giffgaff, orange, o2.... etc pay a third party for bandwidth?

giffgaff have no shops, or have to pay call center staff, how does this equate to being able to offer their customers 100MB a day when O2 only give 500MB a month.

Giffgaff is owned by Telefonica, the parent company that also owns O2, and it uses O2's network. Think of Giffgaff like an experiment where you get a great deal if you've discovered it. But not many people will ever discover it because it's an internet-only company with no shops. It will never threaten O2 by gaining a comparable customer base, so Telefonica lets the experiment continue.

Think how much money it costs to lease high-street retail buildings in every town and city in the UK, and how many staff members get paid in each shop, and how many people work in administration and customer support. And how much O2 spend on TV, radio and print advertising, and sporting sponsorship. Giffgaff has none of these things. They have one fairly anonymous office with a few staff members.

Then think how few people actually use Giffgaff compared to the major networks. It must be a tiny fraction. And then only a small number of Giffgaff customers will be heavy data users.

[Guest jonep]

Giffgaff is owned by Telefonica, the parent company that also owns O2, and it uses O2's network. Think of Giffgaff like an experiment where you get a great deal if you've discovered it. But not many people will ever discover it because it's an internet-only company with no shops. It will never threaten O2 by gaining a comparable customer base, so Telefonica lets the experiment continue.

Think how much money it costs to lease high-street retail buildings in every town and city in the UK, and how many staff members get paid in each shop, and how many people work in administration and customer support. And how much O2 spend on TV, radio and print advertising, and sporting sponsorship. Giffgaff has none of these things. They have one fairly anonymous office with a few staff members.

Then think how few people actually use Giffgaff compared to the major networks. It must be a tiny fraction. And then only a small number of Giffgaff customers will be heavy data users.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. GiffGaff is not owned by Telefonica.

"giffgaff is run by CEO, Mike Fairman, as an independent business, in a separate office, in a different town, with a totally different team of people, many of whom have never worked for O2 or in mobile. Mike and his giffgaff team make their own decisions for what is right for giffgaff and the community, and some of those decisions aren’t the same ones that O2 would make for their customers, but there is certainly no backlash or bad feeling between the 2 companies. I think O2 see giffgaff as their cheeky little cousin."

http://thereallymobileproject.com/2010/06/...r-gav-thompson/

[Guest RottenFoxBreath]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. GiffGaff is not owned by Telefonica.

"giffgaff is run by CEO, Mike Fairman, as an independent business, in a separate office, in a different town, with a totally different team of people, many of whom have never worked for O2 or in mobile. Mike and his giffgaff team make their own decisions for what is right for giffgaff and the community, and some of those decisions aren’t the same ones that O2 would make for their customers, but there is certainly no backlash or bad feeling between the 2 companies. I think O2 see giffgaff as their cheeky little cousin."

http://thereallymobileproject.com/2010/06/...r-gav-thompson/

yeah, it's a subsidiary of Telefónica’s UK O2 operation, he's still part of the bigger picture, but "virtual" if you will, at arms length.

I guess he still answer's to them(o2), as he did/still does work for them(although through GiffGaff now.)

The member get member company it's describes as, sim only, and it works really well, far better support there than o2 could dream of.

They(o2), do the same thing with their broadband, and operate "Be" as a seperate entity.

Edited March 3, 2011 by RottenFoxBreath

[Guest SqueakyG]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. GiffGaff is not owned by Telefonica.

http://thereallymobileproject.com/2010/06/...r-gav-thompson/

I haven't got the wrong end of the stick. I did not suggest that giffgaff is run from the same offices or by the same people as O2; I only stated that giffgaff is owned by Telefonica. Which it is. I said that giffgaff is an experimental company funded by Telefonica, which doesn't impede their other major UK phone company O2. Which is true. From your own link: "We finally presented the finished proposal to the O2 and Telefonica boards in early 2009. They said yes straight away ... I think O2 see giffgaff as their cheeky little cousin."

Or perhaps Giffgaff's own site: http://giffgaff.com/index/us which says: "We are a fully independent company but we are part of the overall Telefonica O2 family."

Or this thread which says more: http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Help-Ask-...onica/m-p/21662

"Yes giffgaff is ultimately owned by telefonica, as we make clear in the 'about us' section of this site ... giffgaff is legally and operationally a separate company, with our own record at Companies House, it's just that the funding to create giffgaff came from O2 telefonica, and we run our service on the O2 network.

Robbie Hearn

Chief of Member Experience at giffgaff"

Edited March 3, 2011 by SqueakyG