37 
EE has been telling us that 500MB is enough, based on their own findings, but the company has also defended its decision to not offer an unlimited plan on its new 4G network, by claiming that it would be pretty much abused. Hmm.
The 4G network provider’s Chief Marketing Officer, Pippa Dunn, spoke to TechCrunch, and said that the company didn’t feel it was necessary to take the step towards an unlimited data plan, as only “super techies” would want unlimited data and that catering to those would only have forced prices up even more.
She said:
“You’ve got your super techie people… who would love nothing more than for us to have given unlimited data packages but for the vast majority of the 27 million who are our customers they don’t need it. If we’d had to price for allowing all of those techie users to be able to use as much data as they’d want your average consumer would really have suffered.”
According to Dunn, on average, customers on Orange and T-Mobile are falling way below their allocations, and by offering an unlimited plan, the company would have attracted people who would abuse the network.
“We don’t think [unlimited data is] necessary [for 4GEE]. The only thing that happens when you get an unlimited data plan is you attract the people who cane the network and that’s not great for any consumer. There will be customers on our network who are using 50GB of data a month… so you end up with customers who are basically making the service worse for all other consumers.”
Of course, some would say what’s the point in having a blazing fast network speed if there’s no room to make use of it, but she also does raise the point that many users are falling way below their usage anyway. Dunn concedes, however, that data usage on 4G will “probably” be higher than it is on 3G, but doesn’t believe it will leap considerably.
“I think customers will find as a result of being able to do things quicker it will be a much more pleasurable experience and they are likely to end up using more data — however I don’t believe that they’re suddenly going to use ten times the amount of data.”
Despite the data cap, Dunn has said that EE is considering introducing some larger data add-ons, but of course, those are expected to just add on to the overall large cost of using the 4G network anyway.
How much data do you use? Are you a “super techie”? Would any of you abuse the 4G network, or do you think you’d still cope with a paltry 500MB of data allowance? Shout out below. [TechCrunch via Techradar]
Image credit: Phone data from Shutterstock
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I think I speak for us all when I say:
Fuck you, EE.
I concur.
Hmm… VERY limited stupidly fast data, or unlimited 2-5mbps for a tenner a month on Three… no contest really.
Play the consumer enough and you will damage your reputation for years come.
I agree, FU EE.
Great points. The bottom line is: If you’re using 500MB of data a month, chances are you’re fine with 3G.
agreed
I’m in the process of cancelling my contract with Orange and taking a new one up with Three. 4G speeds would have made it possible for me to stream things whereas previously with 3G speeds and poor coverage I ended up just stopping half way through boredom. 500MB is in now way anywhere near enough. Done with orange, will wait till other competitors bring 4G to the market.
if you have issues with Three coverage, t-mobile still have the 3g only The Full Monty plan unlimited data (£26 sim only 1 month or £36 24 months with phone)
I concur. This is bullshit. I wasn’t overly enamoured with EE in the first place. First they strangle the market and then they place penal data limits? This is some serious protectionism shit going on here.
And the current one will keep me away.
So EE doesn’t like or want “techie people”….fine, if they don’t want me I’ll take my money elsewhere.
EE doesn’t want anyone who uses their phone to connect to the internet, so thats pretty much everyone !
What stupid public message is this? We dont want techie people… our ideal customer base is the one not using our internet or very rarely… seriously? why are they promoting the 4G at all, why are they promoting smart phones at all? do smart phones use water for internet connection?
Unbelievably imbeciles are managing this partnership i think…
O2 started unlimited plans, with exclusive iphone deal, 1 yr later they killed it, and lost their customers… At least 3 customers from my family, and i am moving all my customers to three for example
i hope three doesnt become the new o2/vodafone non-sense when they grow big enough… everything three doing with call/data plans are best and clever! Arent there any abusers in three, sure hell, there was is will be always ones… But limiting 30-40mbs connections to 100mb is the dumbest thing ever i heard, u watch 30 min clip, half way through, it will pop up and say u reached your monthly limit… what?
Might as well give 100 yrs old dinosaur shack phones with no internet connectivity built in…
But 4G likes being abused, the masochist that it is.
I don’t class wanting to watch HD BBC iPlayer on an iPad on the train on the way home from work as particularly ‘techie’..
Or any of the other web services that eat up data which, up until this point, would have been a struggle on a mobile network.
All EE have done is make the adoption of 4G slower in the UK.. They have pretty much exclusive use of the spectrum band that the (presumably) most widely used 4G devices (iPhone 5/iPads) can use, so anyone buying an iPhone 5 now will look at EE’s offer, politely decline, sign up to O2 or whoever for 24 months and won’t get 4G until the end of their contract when they next buy a new phone.
There is a lack of justification in everything they are saying, it’s just fluff…
I don’t classify users that want to watch a 4 minute video in HD or stream some Netflix as ‘Super Techies’…There’s your 500MB gone right there…
I agree with their general sentiment but think that 1Gb or 2Gb would have been a fair basic starting point.
In this day and age, 2gb should be the worst minimum! What are the points of smart phones they promote 4g for?
HD video chat… half hour chat puff you are out of data…
Kill some time on train watching some youtube… puff data gone…
Take some pictures and videos, upload to your favorite sharing/social media… your data puff gone…
Download a few new/updated applications, your data halved or puff gone…
Superfast internet speed promoted, you cant do this, you can do that but not allowed to use it for more than 30 mins a month… is the way to go?
Ir depends on your outside usage. Personally I tend to do most data intensive things when connected to WiFi (but in fairness that may be because slow download speeds make it impractical at the moment).
Exactly the point mate, i cant use it a lot of data over 3g reliably for long unless i m stationary… but this thing is really fast and you wouldnt use your wifi probably as much or maybe equally… but their excuse is really dumb and one sided… they know damn right that everyone will use it which makes it an abuse in their eyes… not just techies as it is just an excuse word! I m just guessing they will not have the enough bandwidth/foundation to support a lot of people at the same time for long thats why they are limiting, not because of abuse…
If I had unlimited data, 4G or otherwise, then usage would probably be about 8-10GB a month.
Home broadband is more than fast enough that it wouldn’t get used in the house, so it’d be out and about where presently I just hop onto whatever free wifi happens to be around, or use my data.
It would also mean I could legitimately consider a Nexus device as I could stream my media when in work rather than needing it on an SD card.
So 8-10GB is perhaps a little on the high side, but by no means unreasonable.
Since switching to a Three AYCE contract I’m averaging around 10gb per month in addition to wifi when at home. Very easy to get up to that level with regular media consumption.
Thankfully I also average 6Mbps so I’m not that bothered about switching to LTE until the decent networks roll it out.
Other than streaming audio in the office as opposed to having it locally stored, unless my day job changes, my usage won’t.
Perhaps a little more uploading of photos when out at rugby matches, but that’s more battery life dependent than data tbh.
I’ll end up using about 2GB this month, but that’s partly due to needing replacement wifi at home, and also my upgrading to the new Play Store on the sly and forgetting to tell it to update apps via wifi only. That’s 420MB on its own, plus another 300MB for Maps somehow…
Also for some reason the G+ app seems to have used nearly 400MB…
I only cope with 500MB because coverage is shit, even in Central London.
Patronising
500mb no… but I think 8gb should be enough for the 99%
whats the point in having stupidly fast internet with a cap thats like giving someone a ferrari and saying your not allowed to go over 25mph it just ruins it i could happily use a 500mb cap in a few days on 3g let alone 4g
More accurately I’d say it was like giving someone a really fast car and then saying “Drive as fast as you like, but only for the next 100m”. You can go really fast, but not actually get anywhere. Not only that, but at random points your car may be swapped for a ordinary car or you may even have to walk.
Yeah, that works better. I’m gonna steal that analogy.
Go away you techie people!
Hands anyone who doesn’t, deep down in your heart, know she’s completely correct ? They’re caught between a rock and a hard place (and a 3rd, equally unforgiving location too).
(i) Offer unlimited data but charge a fortune for it = Bad PR
(ii) Offer unlimited data and charge reasonably for it = Bad PR when the network is, as she says, caned and falls over on release day.
(iii) Use their current pricing and caps = Bad PR.
With the real-world knowledge that bandwidth isn’t infinite, what would you do in her place ?
Well if they want to be the first 4G network in the UK then they should have expected high demand and ensured they had a network that can cope with that demand.
Data caps in this day and age is beyond stupid.
If you were to use 4G under high usage (or what I consider to be normal usage) you would hit your 500mb limit in 3 mins. 3 mins!
As said above £36 a month for 500mb that you use up in 3 mins or unlimited 3G access (including tethering) that consistently uses 3+GB for £10-£15 a month less without any issues.
I would say wait for O2 and vodafone to come along with their 4G network but theirs will not work with the iPhone 5 so why bother.
I’ll stick to my £20 sim only contract with o2 that includes totally unlimited 3G data (I got my deal before they started putting data caps on 2 years ago) and make do with my home wi-fi
The entire point of her statement is that whatever they do, a percentage of users will go to town with their downloading anyway, and cripple network. And then everyone will complain.
Option (i), unquestionably.
Drop every tariff on that list by £5, ditch the 500MB plan replace the 8GB with 10GB at £60/mth, and offer unlimited at £75.
People can complain all they want, but for probably 99.5% of users the 10GB tariff would be enough, and for those whom it isn’t there’s the unlimited option.
In fact by offering an unlimited option, even at £75/mth, they’ll probably get more people signing up just to say that they have an unlimited 4G tariff, even if they only use 3GB/mth!
Now you’ll merely get complaints that the unlimited tariff is too expensive.
Complaints that it’s too expensive and still have people signing up and paying money for it
versus
Complaints it’s not there at all.
Always take the route that gets people paying you money, even if many think it’s a little overpriced, they’ll come around. Especially when you point out to them that they’re getting the same service that BT Infinity offer, wirelessly, almost anywhere in the country.
But should consumers have to take responsibility for the amount of data that they use?
You would hope that EE provide a decent apple/android app like O2 that allows users to keep track of their data usage.
This 80% usage warning text will come as a huge shock to most people when they first start using 4G
There is no way to please all the people all the time. However charging what they are and giving a paltry allowance is stupid. If they are on one hand advertising what you can do with 4G speeds and on the other not giving you enough of an allowance to do those things they deserve to be cained.
If the capacity isn’t there, they shouldn’t be the ones to control the market. I’m sorry, but in a society which theoretically runs on the basis of free enterprise like ours, “people will use too much bandwidth, it’s not faiiiiir” is not an excuse. If you can’t provide the service you’re advertising, gtfo and make space for another company that can. It’s business.
I use about 1.4Gb per month of my 750Mb data allowance, I wouldn’t say I use it for anything out of the ordinary though.
500Mb would make the whole deal pretty pointless for me.
How does that work?
I get charged huge amounts extra every month
I got a stupid plan for me but in my defence the sales assistant who convinced me to purchase it was unfairly attractive.
I easily plough through 500mb of data in a single day at work and that is just streaming music. It’s the reason I have a 10gb sim card with 3 in my galaxy tab 10.1.
Thanks for nothing EE.
Stupid move, I was considering switching from O2, but I’m not going to bother
I have one of the old o2 simplicity plans, 600 mins, 1200 txt unlimited data for £20. But ive just signed up wth Virgin Mobile, for £20 you can have 2500 mins, unlimited data and txts rolling 30 day contract. However they dont do micro/nano sim, for iphone 5. But nothing stops you from cutting your own. I get orange 3g in my area, but not o2 since i moved house.
I have exactly the same contract with exactly the same device! OMGBFFS4LYF
Zing!
Is it just me or does this person using the term “super techie” make things about 20 times worse?
REALLY think they should be marketing better to this group of consumers, as they are the ones who will pay the money for it!
Also I don’t have an issue with no unlimited data, more the fact that the lowest tier is stupidly limited.
Comparing data usage to T-Mobile and Orange customers is a mistake too, because then you’re ignoring the other three networks, one of which markets themselves as “built for internet” and has unlimited internet. THOSE are the people who are going to want 4G service first. Converting T-Mo and Orange customers is one thing, but STEALING customers from other networks is much better.
I think this article has been slightly missleading in making out that EE have said a 500 mb plan would be an alternative to getting ‘unlimited’ data.
All EE have said is that the ‘average’ user currently doesn’t exceed 500 mb and that they would be unable to offer unlimited as this would be abused.
I think she is probably right about that. Many genuine users would want more than 8gb pm (the real comparison to unlimited) for HD streaming on their commute/ spotify etc. but I think we all know there would be many others walking round with 10+ torrents in their pocket trying to download half the internet on 4g.
well EE its going to cost you a lot of money if yo dont get enough customers .. note this.. the iPhone5 just came out, along with a range of new HTC`s and Samsungs etc.. alot of people are now on a 2 year contract.. your 4G may go live soon, but in 2 years when this large group of nerds go hunting for a new phone on 4G others will have 4G, not just you.. so fuck you EE ill wait.. Three (although with limited cover no doubt) will have an unlimited data plan.. and TBH so the cover seems to be about the same as my old vodafone so not too worried right now…
What total and utter dog’s dangly bits! What about those of us (most of the population) who like to enjoy a YouTube video with friends or family? And being most are now in 1080P, that is going to eat data. Not to mention that more and more devices automatically upgrade their apps, sync content (photos, video clips etc) with the cloud – and of course, stream it back to our devices when we like to show or share.
This guy has got it backwards – the reason people don’t use data is because it’s too pricey! They are trying to pull a text messaging all over again, and overcharge for something that cost them little to run.
Anyway, the wireless broadband revolution that has yet to happen will show the carriers that they cannot continue to treat us like Titanic steerage.
It may well be the way the interview was edit but I think it is a little patrionising.
It makes me think EE want non techie users, perhaps those who have no idea what they are signing up for; which conjures memories of seeing in the past the delight employees of certain mobile phone retailers get when non informed individuals walk in and say ‘I want tariff with free minutes’ and the employee goes to town selling them most inappropriate tariff they have.
In targeting the Non Techie user I think they will have a tough sell at their current prices
I can imagine a conversation as such:
EE: congrats on your new 4G enable phone purchase; you know to really unleash the functions you should get on the 4G network.
Non Techie user: ok how much is that
EE: well service plans start at £36
Non Techie user: that’s a little high I am only paying £25 a month currently
EE: but 4G is the best way to use a smart phone like yours
Non Techie user: well what will it enable me to do?
EE: you can use google maps and surf your favorite websites
Non Techie user: I do that currently on my £25 contract; anything else?
EE: you will be able to stream music and HD video to your phone with little to no delay.
Non Techie user: I don’t know how to do that
EE: well you can also watch iplayer/ITV player/Sky player when on your commute to and back from work
Non Techie user: that would be interesting, I use those at home and my commute is an hour each way. ok let’s do it.
Here is the interesting part does the EE rep tell the Non Techie user that the £36 contract would not even allow them to watch one day’s worth of iplayer on their commute and recommend the larger packages (thus increasing the contract price difference further) or just let them blow through the 500mb limit and let them discover the charge?
I think they should have had a £25 package with 500mb in attempt to try and match existing 3G contracts and tempt those user which are below that level usage at least from their existing contracts.
On a personal point (which I admit will probably define me as a Techie user and thus unattractive to EE) I think EE missed an opportunity to place itself as company of the next generation; they should have cut the free mins and texts and increase the data allowance. If people want the traditional contract they can stick with the Orange and T-mobile brands but establish EE as the home for data usage and consumer needs going forward?
Anyways no sell for me and EE’s implied dismissal of anyone who might want to actually use the 4G network, for its selling points, as Techie Users has put me off EE.
The only people that would want a 4G network are tech people. else why have it?
For the majority of people (and probably myself) , 3G is ample enough. I can do everything on my iPhone/ipad using 3G (when i get a signal of course!)
4G 500mb limit (entry level), is quite frankly the most retarded thing ive heard in a long time. The BBC news report when they said something along the lines of ‘”We really think we’ve priced it at the sweet spot,” “It’s all based on months of consumer research.”
…….sounds all smug to me. I think though they’ve got their demographic and target audience completely wrong.
For me, id be happy to pay about £39 a month for unlimited , which is what i pay more or less for home broadband.
I would pay £49 for unlimited 4G… but i m techie
they wont let me… because when they do that, they cant sell me extra bandwidth and i have noone to go as they are the only ones with it at the moment… the whole thing stinks… because they will use it as a monopoly as there wont be an alternative for a while and also they probably dont have the foundation/bandwidth to support too many “techies” for long… eitherway, dont think they will convert too many people… wrong press, wrong tariff/prices…
£12.90 on a 1 month sim only in old iPhone 4… Unlimited data and some minutes (what are they for?)
Watch at least an hour of Iplayer a day and stream planet rock while at work. My received currently stands at 52.2gb for the last 6 months.
Or pay £36 a month and go back to not being able to use my phone again… Reminds me what it was like being in a 24 mth with Vodafone (shivers..)
Been a pretty happy customer of Vodafone for 10 years but was seriously considering moving over to EE for the 4g speeds not a chance now.
What is the use in having blazing fast speed and a tiny data cap ? If EE think it will be abused if unlimited why not say put a 3 gig download limit on it then?
Struggling to imagine why anyone who would use less than 500MB in a month (so, y’know, barely uses their phone/tablet for anything other than checking your e-mails once a day) would possibly see the benefit of spending MORE money to do that at a speed that is of no benefit to them and that they probably don’t even understand the difference of anyway.
Surely the -entire- point of rushing to release products on 4G is to get the ‘super techies’ (to steal the patronising terms above), or early adopters on board. The people that will want to USE that speed to get the best out of watching Netflix on the bus, listening to music from Google/Spotify/Whatever on the go or sharing Youtube videos with their friends at work/school. The kind of activity that will eat up that ridiculous 500MB allowance in minutes.
The entire thing seems absolutely pointless.
Its only the early adopters who are going to pay £36 a month, and early adopters are pretty much all ‘super techies’. Well done chasing them off, EE
Arrrrghhh, EE (Orange and T-mobile) you stupids twits. One of the main points of 4G in the uk, is for it to help people in rural areas to get a decent broadband connection (even though the big cities are the places being rolled out first). How do you expect them do anything with just 5GB of usage a month.
So, what’s the point of using bigger straw if the size of the milkshake (overpriced) is not going to change?
what can i say about EE data plans a total rip off,they must think people are really stupid to pay £36.00 per month for 500 MB of data,i stream netflix and stream music on my ipad and use over 20 GB per month costs me with three under £20.00 per month,connection speed aprox 8-10 MBPS plenty for streaming movies.To sum it up in one word corporate greed