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It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for this moment, but finally, the UK has a full-fledged 4G network to call its own in 11 cities around the UK. Those looking for a blazing-kick in the mobile broadband can nip can now grab their slice of 4G LTE, but unfortunately it won’t be cheap.
Plans start at £36 a month, and that’s for a puny 500MB of data allowance, which, really, isn’t worth much when you’re clocking up 30Mbit speeds. To grab yourself an actual usable amount of data you’re looking at coughing up £46 per month at least for two-whole-years, and that’s just for 3GB a month. Ouch.
The choice of 4G handsets is, thankfully, quite wide ranging, with decent offerings like the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S III LTE, Galaxy Note 2, and the HTC One XL leading the pack. Those looking for 4G on a Windows Phone won’t have long to wait either as EE has Nokia’s LTE-packing Lumia 920 on the way for November 9th.
EE customers currently in an Orange or T-mobile contract without a 4G phone will have to pay to terminate their current plan, while those who bought a LTE-packing phone will just have to ring up and switch to a 4G plan for free. That means for those within the first 6 months of their contract with an iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S III will have to fork out a one-off £99 fee. Those further into your contracts will have to pay the early termination fee, which is normally the remaining number of months left on your contract times your monthly fee. An expensive proposition for sure, but EE’s softening the blow slightly with a 33 per cent discount.
Still, it’s the bleeding edge, so you’re paying the early adopters fee, which we should all be horribly familiar with these days. If you plan on hopping into an EE store today, or jumping online to grab your 4G handset, here’s a handy table to make your choices a little easier.
Click for full size
So, dear readers, is 4G everything you’ve been wishing and hoping for, or have EE’s costly price plans put you well and truly off? Is 3G + Wi-Fi hotspots enough?
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EE’s sim only 4G plan knocks £10 a month off and you would only be locked in for 12 months which makes it all the more tempting.
But unlimited will always be better than horrible data limits.
I would rather walk all the way around the world than take a fighter jet 5 miles down the road
Oddly enough I don’t feel the need to be at the cutting edge for this, since you are paying over the odds for a service that will most likely be sporadic at best and depend upon you being where it is. Maybe in a year when the competition has pushed the price down and availability up it will be worth it.
I was thinking a similar thing, nipping up to London to do my web surfing would significantly increase the time it takes to view a web page.
On the other hand a season ticket would probably still be cheaper than your mobile bill for the year
Likewise, I really want to have the Note 2 with LTE but I’ll be damned if I’m paying those monthly prices.
Get the Nexus 4 and save your pennys.
That’s my plan. Get the cheap 16Gb Nexus 4, enjoy the ‘slight’ boost in speed from some people coming off 3G/HSPA for 4G and in 2 years (my average phone lifecycle) re-evaluate costs and phones available etc.
That screen is too small, I’d find it hard to lose that much real estate.
then get the Note 2 off contract on 3G and wait for an acceptable Sim only 4G deal.
It’s a plan, think I may wait a month or two for the Note to drop a tad more in price.
With data limits LTE is completely useless. 500MB allowance will last you for what, 2 minutes? Good luck with that.
Unless you change your internet habits, then you should use the same as you use now. The only difference is you will get what you want quicker.
If you start to use it to tether your pc instead of using wifi (which i do with 3g every now and again and get good results tbh) or downloading stuff to your phone or stream hd all day long, then good bye your limit.
To be honest if i’m out and about i can wait a few seconds of my webpage to load up…. 3g onward !!
If I’m boarding the 4G wagon, it’s precisely because I want to change my internet habits. And I’m willing to pay for that. I want to watch movies on the go, stream music, etc. That’s what it was supposed to be for. With 500 MB limit the entire purpose of 4G is gone.
fair enough
I was planning on going from my S3 to S3 LTE, but seeing as they have these ridiculous tariffs I will hold back, get a Nexus 4 (sell my S3) and then when it all settles move to LTE
As the presenters on BBC Breakfast agreed this morning, getting a better signal, or any signal at all, should be more of a priority.
I’m not sure why you’d need 15-20mb/s on a phone anyway, unless you did all your video and music downloading directly to your phone, which is fair enough I suppose.
Is the same thing happening to mobile phones that happened to TVs? ie. The industry clutching at straws in an attempt to convince buyers there are reasons to buy new tech.
I’m guessing you don’t watch a great deal of streaming video on your phone?
You would not stream video either, having such pathetic data allowance.
LTE speed with 500 MB or 1 GB data allowance? Only psycho could make such tariff.
I think as it becomes more populated that it wont be any faster than what I get on Three for a long while until they refine 4G. So far the speeds I see aren’t what can be considered 4G anyways, I mean in the tests they were only getting 3MBPS which is hardly amazing considering that is what HSPA+ can offer and can offer up to 20MB in theory on the latest versions.
So I just got of the EE sales line, after ordering my Lumia 920. On the call, they told me that they don’t offer a 1GB/month plan. Instead, the £41 month plan is actually a 2GB plan. I wasn’t sure he had his facts right, so I pointed out EE’s website to him, which said £41 gets you 1GB, and that there was no 2GB plan. He insisted the website was wrong, and that I would get 2GB. The next lower option was 500mb, so I ordered the 2GB anyway. The handset cost was still £49.99 as the website suggested. Now I’ll wait for the phone to see how much data is really on my plan.
Interestingly, they were willing to take my order for the contract plan today, but could only sell me a sim-free phone on the 9th of November. I would apparently get the contract phone “in a few days”, though that could still mean the 9th I guess…