United Kingdom - Pay as you go - best deal? - General Questions and Answers

Hi All,
What is the best Pay as you go sim card deal in the UK? I just need a UK sim card for three weeks. I'm looking for the lowest upfront fee and then cheapest minutes. If it had some data capabilities that'd be good.
Cheers!

Asda mobile is cheap for calls 8p per min and 20p per meg for data the sim card cost 50p in asda stores.But if you use alot of data virgin have unlimited data (well 25mb) for 30p a day but the calls cos 15p per min.

If you know someone under 25, get them to get you a blyk simcard. They give you £15 credit a month without you ever even topping up, and all they do is send you a couple of advertising texts a month.
Only disadvantage is its not 3g

T-Mobile had one of the best PAYG data rates, think it was £2.50 for 5 days and sort of unlimited. Been contract for a while now so not sure if it's still current.

Related

Official PAYG Orange UK GPRS data charges

Hey All,
Found out the below from Orange UK Customer services on pricing for PAYG data charges...
£4 a MB!?!?!
I suggest if you're going to use GPRS on an Orange PAYG SIM, buy the Orange World Access 4 add-on package as follows:
1. Orange World Access 4 provides 4 megabytes GPRS (general Internet) or 160 minutes CSD access to Orange World for £4.
2. You have one calendar month from application to your account in which to use your GPRS or CSD allowance. Any GPRS or CSD use over the allowance set out above will be charged at your standard rate.
3. Orange World Access Daily can only be used in the UK. Any GPRS or CSD use outside of the UK will be charged at the relevant current international rates.
4. The Orange Extras terms and conditions also apply. These should be viewed at www.orange.co.uk or a copy is available from your local Orange shop.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the Email from Orange Customer Services:
Thank you for your mail.
I can confirm that pay as you go GPRS is charged at £4 per megabyte.
The following information gives an approximate example of costs as a
guide:
1 page word document = 20-30 kb's = 7.8p - 11.7p
1 WAP Page = 600-900 bytes = 0.23p -0.34p
1 average website homepage = 34kb = 13.26p
I trust this will be of assistance.
Kind regards
Michele
Orange Customer Services
Query: Dear Sir/Madam,
Please could you let me know what the cost is for GPRS data, using a
PAYG connection. By this, I mean the costs of using it casually and not
part of a data bundle. Thank you.
T-mobile PAYG ftw...
got t-mobiles website at least the uk one will send you 2 free payg sim cards.
put a fivers worth of credit on at ya local corner shop. and there you go one squid a day maximum.. no more whatever ever. Surf away.
For me and all my friends this is far cheaper than any of the subscribtion services.
Edit/Addition from here>>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/20/three_cheapo_data_plans/
Mobile operator 3 is set to offer budget mobile data to UK punters. According to reports, three new tariffs will see it match the most attractive offerings from T-Mobile, starting from £10 a month. That's the same price that Demon set when it launched its pioneering consumer dial-up internet offering, back in 1993.
At £10 a month, the basic Mobile Broadband package ("Light") gets you 1GB of data, while £15 gets you 3GB, and £25 up to 7GB. Data usage outside these buckets is charged at 10p/MB. 3 will throw in a free USB modem to existing customers, or £29 if you sign up for eighteen months.
By comparison, T-Mobile's Web'n'walk Plus deal, which today offers the best value, permits 3GB for £24.68 (inc. VAT) and 10GB for £37.45 - which means that the "Plus" and "Max" offerings from 3 work out at a lower minimum price per MB. Vodafone offers 3GB for £25 per month, and a curious deal where you get £8.50 for 500MB in a 24-hour period.
It leaves the other two UK operators competing for the dunce's cap. O2 and Orange both offer 1GB for £45 a month. We're excluding plans with a cap in the megabytes, such as Orange's 160MB for £20 a month.
3 will offer the service with five HSDPA handsets, but using the phone as a modem won't incur the wrath of the data cops, as it does with some other networks.
3 told us today that "our pricing has not yet been released and the prices you quote are inaccurate at present
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So if
A) your phone can take the 3network sim cards - iirc my hermes cant for some reason.
B) The deal comes out true.. sounds a bargain to me
As a casual mobile surfer.. I guess on average I use t'internet 3 or so times a week while mobile.. which on average costs me around 1 pint in real money. never reaches any limit restrictions.. havent abused it, but have taken advantage of youtube, google maps, ebay etc frequently.. so for just over a tenner a month you cant go wrong.

attn: europe and uk: cell phone plans

i was bored and was looking aroudn t-mobile uk and vodafone uk.
i found out that pretty much all their phones are free on contract (awesome)
and wireless plans are cheap as heck 60usd gets you 800 min, unlimited texts and internet 60 gets you half that here, if even (heck, it would cost you 35 bucks just to addon unlimited internet and texts)
but now heres where im perplexed, in the us we have unlimited nights and weekends on pretty much all plans and all networks, as well as in-network calling for free.
does that also exist in the uk and europe?
t-mobile used to have those evenings and weekends plans but they don't offer those anymore. Not too sure about Vodafone though.
Free evenings/weekend calls aren't as common on contracts as they used to be, partly due I guess to the increasing headline figure. It is however a releatively common perk on the pay-as-you-go circuit. Top up £x per month, and get free evening and weekend calls.
I can see the logic to it if you assume business users are predominantly on contracts and consumers on PAYG. The business user won't need his work phone out of hours (much), so no point offering unlimited off-peak when you don't have to, and will have their own phone for personal use anyway (part of why there are more mobiles than adults!). The home user is (hopefully!) engaged with work/school during the day, so makes few calls during this period, and if they're a heavy user off-peak, get that as a perk each month when they top up £x.
Also worth bearing in mind with any cross-ocean comparisons is "caller and recipient pay" there vs "caller only" pays here, so assuming an even split of incoming/outgoing calls, 100 minutes in the UK will get you as far as 200 minutes would in the US.
I get unlimited land-line calls on my orange contract - which means that my 800 minutes a month goes very far because only mobile phones come out of that pot.

Singapore SIM PAYG SIM cards that offer 'unlimited' data AND voice/SMS

Hi,
I'm going to be making a few trips to Singapore this year, each of 3 or 4 weeks in length (leaving for the 1st one tomorrow)
My plan is (was?) to get a PAYG local SIM card, offering both voice and data. However, looking online (and asking a friend in Singapore), I can't seem to find a card that offers both voice AND reasonable data rates.
M1 offer an unlimited $6 (SIN) a day data plan, which I'd be happy with, if it could also do voice and SMS at the normal rates for Singapore PAYG (around 8-16c a minute), but looking at their web site I think it's data only.
Alternatively, there's several regular voice payg cards, but the data rates are around 1.1c/kb (or more) - which at 10's of MB a day really adds up (looking at my US T-Mob account, I used around 350Mb this month, which would come in at around $3k.....ouch).
The alternative is to get a local card, and turn off data while I'm there (instead using Wifi), but I'm hoping someone knows of a PAYG SIM card that really combines regular voice pricing with some form of decent data plan.
Thanks in advance....
-Steve
PS I guess my T-Mobile US unlimited voice/data plan has spoilt me, but not sure I can live without my T-pro 2...

Prepaid Phone Options

I am currently looking for a prepaid cell phone option.
This phone is to just receive couple of forwarded phone calls a month.
I have a Motorola Razr from Sprint that I have sitting around. I would like nothing more than to use it as a prepaid phone instead of paying money for those bulky and ugly phones.
Is that a possibility?
Thank you all.
If your only gonna get limited calls tmobiles your best solution. You can pay $100 for 1150 minutes that last for 1 year. All other phones offer crap for prepay. You can also buy $10 for 30 minutes, $25 for 140 minutes, $50 for 400 minutes, or $100 for 1000 minutes but if you spend $100 you get 15% more minutes. The 10 25 and 50 dollar refills activate for 3 months, the 100 dollar card activates for 1 year. If you interested I know a great guy on ebay that owns a shop that can sell you a prepaid activation kit with sim card for like $8. You email him your ime number, plan, and area code and he activates it for you. Then you can just get the sim card and buy a nice GSM razr or GSM phone and then buy the $100 refill card. and BAM! your set till 7/1/2011.
If you need data and all that crap from a real carrier Tmo still has their flex pay which is $29.99 for 500 anytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. But then your paying monthly.
maxpower097 said:
If your only gonna get limited calls tmobiles your best solution. You can pay $100 for 1150 minutes that last for 1 year. All other phones offer crap for prepay. You can also buy $10 for 30 minutes, $25 for 140 minutes, $50 for 400 minutes, or $100 for 1000 minutes but if you spend $100 you get 15% more minutes. The 10 25 and 50 dollar refills activate for 3 months, the 100 dollar card activates for 1 year. If you interested I know a great guy on ebay that owns a shop that can sell you a prepaid activation kit with sim card for like $8. You email him your ime number, plan, and area code and he activates it for you. Then you can just get the sim card and buy a nice GSM razr or GSM phone and then buy the $100 refill card. and BAM! your set till 7/1/2011.
If you need data and all that crap from a real carrier Tmo still has their flex pay which is $29.99 for 500 anytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. But then your paying monthly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. But I have a Sprint RAZR. Would it be possible for me to use this phone???
No sprints a CMDA phone, your limited to sprint, verizon, or metropcs. Figuring you can get a new GSM unlock RAZR3 for about $25 on craigslist its still your best option.

Why stay with Sprint?

So, I have a real problem. I've been with Sprint for 10 years as of this August. I have perfect payment history and a credit rating above 780. I currently own the HTC Hero, which has been a good little phone, but I want to upgrade. I have the $150 credit to get a new phone, but that's where the issues begin to crop up.
My current contract expires Feb. 19, 2012. Because of successful negotiations in the past with Sprint's Executive Services, I pay $36 and change after taxes and fees for the following:
Plan details
Everything Data 450 $69.99
450 Anytime Minutes Included
Nationwide Long Distance Included
America - Roaming Included
Unlimited Any Mobile, Anytime
Unlimited SMS Text Messaging
Unlimited Picture Mail
Unlimited Data Usage
GPS Navigation
Sprint Data Essentials Pack
Nights: M-TH 7pm-7am Wknd: F 7pm-M 7am
Caller ID
Call Waiting
Three-Way Calling
Voicemail
Add-on services for:
Sprint Navigation
$0.00
Cellular Call Detail
$0.00
Unlimited Nights&Weekends-7pm
$0.00
Premium Data $0 add-on charge
$0.00
300 bonus Anytime Minutes per month
$0.00
Unlimited Any Mobile, Anytime
$0.00
Data Usage
$0.00
Picture Mail
$0.00
I don't use a whole lot of minutes (mostly mobile-to-mobile), don't use a whole lot of data (never more than 2GB/mo), and my max texts are typically around 3500/mo.
I want to upgrade my phone, and I'm considering the SGS2. I have been in contact with Executive Services recently, and the lowdown is that if I want to get a new phone, I will have to pay $200 for the phone. Then, since I was grandfathered in, I'll have to pay the premium data fee of $10/mo. But, I will also have to renew my contract and I will lose the extra $20/mo service credit that is currently offsetting the price of my service. I will retain my corporate discount of 27%, but, all told, after taxes and fees, simply upgrading my phone for $200 will actually increase the price of my service to about $65-70/mo after taxes and fees. This is nearly doubling the price of my service, and without a free phone to boot.
This is nearly the price of similar competing Verizon and AT&T service plans (after my corp discounts there), but Sprint doesn't offer 4G in my area (Albuquerque, NM), and their 3G service is spotty, at best.
Why should I stay with Sprint? Are there better options?
If your bill is going to go up anyway you might want to consider going with a carrier that offers GSM phones (t-mobile, AT&T). That way if you manage to wangle the price of your contract down over the years and face a similar situation as you're in now you can just go out and buy any GSM phone, unlock it (if necessary), stick your current SIM card in and voila, you have a new phone, but you get to keep your existing (cheap) contract.
I joined t-mobile about 2 months ago on a monthly rolling contract, I wanted to change my phone so I just bought a Samsung Exhibit 2 outright from Amazon and stuck my current SIM card in. No hassle.
That's sage advice. Thank you!
How much of a difference from $65-70/mo am I looking at from other cellular providers for the same level of service? Just a cursory check finds $0.01 Verizon phone deals through Amazon, and similar monthly recurring charges for 450 anytime, unlimited text, and 4GB data, after corporate discounts.

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