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We’ve had a date, October 30th, for a while, but now we have prices to go with it. The bad news is there’s no unlimited data, and if you want the sweet, blazing waves of 4G before the end of the month you’ll have to pay at least £36-a-month for two years to get it.
Actually, £36 a month isn’t all that bad, but it comes with a paltry 500MB of data, which is, frankly, pathetic when you can hit fibre-like speeds on the go. The price plans go up from there, and while all include unlimited voice calls and texts, the data allowance varies.
If you want something vaguely usable, £41-a-month buys you 1GB; £46 3GB; £51 5GB, and finally, £56 per month buys you 8GB of data. If you want to only sign your life away for 12 months, add £10 per month to each tariff and you’ve got your rather extortionate price. Mind you, you can use that data however you like — tethering is go — and if you run out, there’s no chance of bill shock. EE will warn you when you’re 80 per cent through, and when you hit 100 per cent, it’ll stop your data and give you the option to buy data boosters. Said boosters start at £3 for 50MB and ramp up through £6 for 500MB, £15 for 2GB, and £20 for 4GB — not a cheap prospect.
The good news, is that if you happen to already have a 4G-enabled phone, say you bought a SIM-free iPhone 5 at launch, there will be SIM-only contracts. Unfortunately they’re not actually that much cheaper. For 12-month contracts you can take £15 off the prospective tariff (therefore starting at £21 for 500MB), or supposedly just £5-a-month off for 30-day rolling contracts, but that has yet to be confirmed. The bad news is you’ll have to wait till November 9th to grab them, so you’re out of luck if you’re desperate to cruise on 4G immediately.
Existing Orange and T-mobile customers will be able to upgrade to a 4G contract for free if you have an 1800MHz-capable LTE phone. If not, and you bought an iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy S III, or HTC One X in the last six months, you can dump your current contract and switch to EE 4G for £99. Anyone outside that will get 33 per cent off their early termination fee, which is normally just the outstanding monthly charges, but they can quickly add up.
EE’s also throwing in a couple of value-adds to try and sweeten the deal. You’ll get free Wi-Fi courtesy of BT WiFi, plus EE’s going the streaming-film route too. It’s launching EE Film, which will compete with the likes of Now TV from Sky. EE will have 700 films available to stream, including about 200 new films that’ll be day-and-date releases with DVD. Until February, EE4Gers will get one free film credit a week for their choice of flick, which can be watched on your phone or computer. The film can be streamed or downloaded to your device, and it won’t even count towards your data allowance. EE’s continuing where Orange Wedneadays left off too, with 2-4-1 cinema tickets, plus you can rent films for between 79p and £3.99 a shot. Unfortunately they’re all just in SD — no HD movies here I’m afraid — but a free film once a week from an up to date library is better than a kick in the teeth.
EE’s also throwing in a strange backup-come-insurance solution as well. Called ‘Clone Phone’, the bundled ‘lite’ version just gives you 500MB of backup storage via an EE app for contacts and media. I’m not sure 500MB will get you very far, and considering Apple, Google and Microsoft all offer integrated solutions that do a similar thing for free, I have no idea why you’d use this. Anyway, if it sounds like a good idea to you, there’s a pay-for 16GB storage upgrade option available, which for £4-a-month also nets you phone tracking, should you lose your device. If you’re into full-blown insurance, ‘Clone Phone Fully Loaded’ is available for between £6 and £14 a month, depending on your phone, which affords you a replacement handset within 24 hours, plus all of the above. Unfortunately that kind of service doesn’t come cheap as there’s an excess of £50 to pay, but there’s no limit to the number of replacement phones you can have.
EE’s 4G network is launching in 10 cities (Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield), and is ahead of schedule in Southampton, with parts of the city already covered. Five other cities, namely Belfast, Hull, Derby, Nottingham and Newcastle will be 4G-enabled before the year is out. After that, the next targets for EE’s 4G expansion will be Cornwall, Cumbria and Northern Ireland, with everywhere else following at a later date. Within the cities that are already 4G enabled, they’ll see coverage starting from the city’s epicentre and spreading out into the suburbs as the year progresses, so that 20 million people are covered by Christmas.
EE’s also doing the home broadband thing, with EE fibre, which will set you back £15 (plus line rental) for 38Mbit fibre, with various plans available, cranking the speed up to 76Mbit. If you bundle 4G and fibre together, EE will knock £5 a month off your combined bill. 4G plans for businesses will differ, while a 4G portable hotspot can be had starting at £16 a month for 2GB of data.
Whichever way you roll it, EE’s 4G isn’t going to come cheap, and it’s a crying shame there’s no unlimited data packages, especially considering the plans top out at an eye-watering £56-a-month. It could have been worse, though, as EE has a monopoly on 4G in the UK for the time being. While we don’t know how much the other networks will charge come the middle of next year, I suspect competition will put a downward pressure on price.
Update: We now have handset pricing, and, well, there’s nothing cheap about it.
Image credit: Mobile mast from Shutterstock
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There it is 4G is now useless, barely a bump up in data cap but speeds will apparently be a lot faster. Luckily though you’ll probably not be able to get 4G where you are for the next few years anyways.
I’ll stick with three and their unlimited data plan for £35 a month because I’ll actually be able to use it as they have the best signal everywhere I personally go and have no cap. Also it is fast enough, I download torrents really fast, I can stream BBCiPlayer and everything else.
How the hell can these guys get away with charging so much? I mean these phones are being held back by these poor caps. I mean once you hit the limit £3 per 50mb……..
I’m on 3, I’ve found it bollocks, and I’ve heard mostly bad things about it, but I have heard about 1 in 10 people wax lyrical. It’s definitely good value for money, and fast download speeds, but the signal is terrible, and the ping is the worst of any network.
I’ve been on every other network and I said personally they have the best signal to where I go. I don’t experience high pings, not that it even matters unless you’re gaming. They’ve also got the fastest 3G I’ve experienced and offer free tethering.
I’ve tried lots of other networks like Orange, O2 and Vodafone but they’ve all been useless, had crap data plans and for some reason especially on O2, whenever I’ve wanted to use 3G it cuts out….
So for me personally Three have been amazing, the best by far.
Everyone has different experiences though, I only stick to central and Southern England, I don’t go to Wales or up North.
I live near Guildford, and am at Bath uni, so it’s interesting to see how relatively similar locations have led to completely different experiences. It takes ages for me to load a web page, then once it starts loading, it loads really quickly. All the analysis apps on my phone agree with me, but again, we probably just have had very different experiences. Oh God, O2s 3G network, I completely agree with you. EEs is pretty damn amazing, I don’t know if you’ve tried it since they merged? Something to consider. But yeah, if you’re one of the few lucky people with 3, thank God! I’ve not been so good.
I joined it on the back of my friend saying how amazing Three was compared and at the time they were the only ones offering unlimited data. So I took the risk as they used to be terrible years back, as did Orange, back in a time when O2 and Vodafone were good lol.
I’ve had nothing but great experiences and because I had I told some of my friends, two of them joined and they agree Three is great too.
The only person who doesn’t is my Mother who I bought an iPad for and she has really bad 3G signal with it. Though I live in the same town and have HSPA+ everywhere around here on my GS2 and she has like 2 bars of 3G on the iPad.
I really think though it is also device specific because of this, I mean all my friends use Android because we all hate closed OS’s and wont be buying Windows 8 lol. We all have amazing signal and my Mother who has iPhones and and iPad on the same Network doesn’t get great signal.
I have been on 3 mobile since 2005, went to bath uni (EEE) in 06, moved to london in 09. Never had any problems at all in any of the two places. Just moved back to somerset (between bath and bristol) and signal is still great. Cant say I can compare networks tho, had a virgin media nokia 3210 some time ago but that was just payg, funded from paper round money.
Due for a upgrade now actually.. considering lumia 920 but exclusive to EE for now, and pretty pricey.. sorta want to stick to 3 too argh!
Order a new satellite then….
Don’t you mean antenna?
I totally forgot the point of my comment, which was that the ping is the key difference between the two. LTE feels much much faster. To do with packed switching, and the sustained data rate across a larger number of people is much better. The network scales much better.
Ping times, by design, are much much lower on LTE. Even in shit LTE signal areas, the pings should stay low.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Packet switching.
I’ve been on 3 for a good 6 months or so now and for what I do it’s been great. I do however live in Glasgow city centre so I suppose it’s not the best of tests, the 3G speeds are definitely better than Orange though (My old network). Coverage has been fine most places I’ve visited and great value for money especially with tethering.
One thing that is a bit of a pain though is that they don’t get the signal boosts on Virgin Trains like other networks which was a pain for me over the summer, I suppose this probably doesn’t affect too many people though.
For anyone on the fence though, go for 3! Great value for money and since they’ll be using the same band as EE for 4G when it comes, your iPhone 5 should work on it eventually!
Great value for money. And apparently fast.
Definatley, I live in a small’ish town and I get fast 3G everywhere, always beat everyone on speedtest getting at leased 6+ MBPS. They use to be crap about 5 years ago but it’s soooo good now, I can stream music in my car everywhere I go.
O2 is crap, very crap 3G if your lucky enough to get it here.
Vodafone is crapper.
EE is good, but pricing is inhuman compared to Three’s.
Three always have the best deal. £35 a month – Unlimited Internet (With personal hotspot) 5000text 5000mins.
They don’t slow you down.
The only thing to watch out for is that Three customers tend to get marketing calls, just don’t answer for a week and they tend to stop for a few month.
and from what I can tell Three’s “one” plan is the only one on the market that includes tethering and Skype, which is the main reason I switched to them. Until any other network can match that they can get stuffed, 4G or not.
I ditched Three about 2 months ago for GiffGaff, kinda regretting that choice now. Thinking about going back to Three but I don’t know if I can be arsed dealing with their appaling customer support should I want to ditch them again.
That and I would have a sim-only plan and they don’t allow overseas use for 2 months :/
Its not that bad, learn Hindu
4G in the UK clearly needs to have a hell of a lot more competition than a total of, one company. Before its pricing is going to be anywhere near worth it. I mean £3 for 50mb? I can pay three £5 and have completely unlimited internet for the day in most european countries at sometimes HSPA+ speeds with Three.
Look up for my comments. But with regards to competition; the sale of the spectrum has barely been organised yet. No doubt prices will drop later. Think about it from their perspective. You could make a killing, if you were them.
Poor student here; not an issue for me. But surely it would make good business sense to offer a super expensive £75-odd, or even £100 a month unlimited, as a replacement for home broadband or for super rich people. It wouldn’t hurt, and it would be quite the money maker.
How would that be better? You can get 100mb from Virgin for like £20 a month and then Three Unlimited data and I think tmobile offer unlimited too for £35 a month so it’s cheaper than both…
It wouldn’t be better for me, I don’t need more than 3G speeds for the occasional facebook upload and news article check. It would make better business sense for them because people might consider using it for home broadband, and I know better-off B2B sales-bases companies such as Adobe would buy a few contracts like this, included in expenses.
My 3 just pinged at 111ms download 6269kbps download and upload 1650. On a galaxy note at 2am in Hitchin Herts a sleepy town too……
Except mobile isn’t really all that reliable, no matter what the advertising may say.
Being inside a building buggers it up, being surrounded by lots of concrete buildings buggers it up.
It’s still not a feasible replacement for an actual wire.
Oh, completely agree. I’m saying this from their perspective, not from ours. I think 3G speeds (8 meg +), with 4G ping (100ms or less), for everyone, with fibre optics (100 meg +, 10ms or less) between buildings, then I can die happy. Because all data will be almost instantaneous. Oh, and someone sort out the mess that is WiFi. Please. ac is meant to fix a lot of problems.
I’m getting a ping of 62 on Speedtest with my GS2 on Three atm, to me that is good enough and anything up to 200 is perfectly fine for gaming. Considering that consoles use the green bars to judge ping and 4 green bars can be anywhere from 0 – 200.
Also there are lots of other causes of latency like display and input devices which people usually cheap out on.
62! Genuinely impressed! Like above, I’ve not had the same luck as you. I am rocking a Desire Z, quite below your S2. I haven’t run any speedtests down in Bath, only ever in my home antenna, which was notable for being bad, 3 even admitted it. Bear with me as I try speedtest down here.
I’m very Impressed with 3 here in gloucester, my ping is usually between 40 and 60 ms and I regularly over 10mb/s down over 3g (iPhone 5), my upload is almost always quicker than that on my virgin fibre connection
Damn everyone having a better experience than me.
just did a test in my office here in the centre of brighton with a three contract and my GS2 gives me 78ms.
Even loading the webpage is a lot nippier here… Stand corrected with regards to 3. But believe me when I say, middle of Surrey, Guildford, my connection was balls and 3 admitted it. Not impressive, considering it’s a huge commuter town.
Three’s reception in Guildford is SHOCKING to say the least, I couldn’t understand it.
Problem with Three as well (at least on the iPhone 4S) is that there is no 2G backup in place for calls/ texts so if you don’t have any/crappy signal you’re screwed.
Exactly what I’m looking for with EE, who I’ve just moved to.
~100 ms – great ping. 3-8 meg down – always knew this was good, but still impressed me. 1-2 up, pretty great. Must be my knackered Desire Z. Stand corrected. Ignore all previous comments.
I’ve never had good experiences with HTC. I love Samsung though the Galaxy S2 has been amazing and tbh it still is right up there, I mean it offers the base experience all these newer phones do. T
he only reason I’m getting a Note 2 is because I love the screen and the features that come with it. I’m always phoning up companies or whatever and they want you to put the number in and you pretend you’re doing it lol. With the Note 2 you can just pull out the pen and it instantly brings up the notepad in mid call and you can easily write it. I love the picture in picture stuff where you can browse or whatever and watch video, especially on that giant screen.
Three are also really good at releasing new firmware from Samsung, only annoying thing is they pack in all this crap. Though if I’m honest I just use custom roms lol. I always buy through Three too because I hate dead pixels and I phoned up their customer service (in India) and no questions asked they sent me a new phone and I handed my existing one over. Normally you have to go into a store or wait for them to inspect it for them to tell you they see no dead pixels lol.
Never owned a Sammy, just ordered an S3 though, should be good.
I just went for the iPhone 5 (64gb) on an unlimited data package (no fair usage agreement) on 3, it’s costing me £40/month, but I consider it good value on account of the device and the fact that I regularly get over 10mb/s down and 2 up (ping usually between 40 and 60 ms) over 3g (the best I’ve got is 12.70 D, 2.51 U). The 3 rep. in store mentioned trials of 4g in the new year, but honestly, I’m not that excited: For a start it may well be an add-on, and it will probably be a while before we get it in my neck of the woods, also I dont know if I would actually be able to make use of that speed as tethering costs me £8/month (the one BIG downside of my contract).
Yeah for some reason on Apple Phones everyone charges for Tethering but not on Android….. I’m on the same plan I guess (One Plan) and on the Galaxy Note 2 I’m getting it’s free Tethering like my GS2.
I spose the iPhone 5 is a locked OS so they can charge, same was Windows Phone.
You can jailbreak and get tethering for free.
Just not sure if the 5 has been JBroken yet.
I dont think there is a jb yet, I know there were demos of one (possibly tethered) on twitter days after the release , so there’s something in the pipeline… I’m a little on the fence over doing it as I have found apple care to be very useful on my retina MBP and the jb does void it if they find out. That said I got a previously jailbroken iPad repaired no problem.
They have no way of finding out if you restore it to the factory OS.
Yeah thats what I figured.
I’m on on the ultimate internet 500, when I was on the sim ten with my unlocked iphone 4, I got free tethering with 3, I was thinking that they started charging for tethering because its a truly package, as opposed to the 2gb cap I had on the sim ten.
Why do operators immediately cripple themselves when they see a chance to make money? My 3G+/HSDPA speeds are 5-8mbps, which is not too shabby and in fact faster than my Wifi at work. Even so, I would be interested in upgrading to 4G because, well, it’s new…
However I’m not going to pay through the nose for it, and I suspect there’s a lot of others who feel the same. Let’s face it, the £36 option is a non starter. Even the £41 tariff is dubious with the speeds 4G will supposedly offer. EE have a chance here to offer 4G at a reasonable price* and become THE 4G operator. With a reasonably priced offer, they would become the network of choice for users coming to the end of their contract. Instead, I think many will stick where they are as they feel their data speeds are ‘good enough’ and would rather stay on a cheaper tariff.
It’s similar, in a small way, to NFC. The operators (and banks) see someone will make money, and think that that someone should be them. As a result, no one can use it.
*I’m aware they would make less money per unit/person. Not ‘no money’, less.
I’ll stick with my existing unlimited 3G deal on T- Mobile. I’d rather have unlimited data at 3G speeds than limited data at 4G speeds. How quick would you blow through 500mb at 4G speeds anyway? What a joke …..
Good news that they’re doing SIM-only, but ouch at the prices. I might see if I can get away with 1GB, and then probably upgrade to 3GB after the first month!
Not really sure on the point of unlimited minutes… I only use about 800mins a month, so it’s money wasted really.
Where was the November 9th date for SIM-only mentioned? Can’t say I can see that on http://ee.co.uk/plans but it might just be tired eyes this morning!
That’s what EE said in its briefing.
Ta. Odd that they told you guys that but then didn’t put it on their website!
Was 4G ever really going to be that useful in the first place ? It frankly doesn’t really blow me away to know that I can now download Angry Birds in 0.25 seconds.
Erm, yeeeaaahhh …no thanks!
Why would anybody pay this much for so little? The only way to sell 4G is to have unlimited data. It’s like laying out a massive spread of your favourite sweets and saying you’re allowed one and the rest are going to get thrown away.
But here’s my main problem with this; I happen to live in a city that now has the EE 4g network but why on earth would I shell out extra for 4g when I can’t even reliably get a decent 3G connection (or mobile signal for that matter) and if I venture anywhere beyond the city limits and into the countryside I’ll be lucky to get 2G! Surely more effort needs to be made on reliable 3G coverage before me move on to bigger and better things? As we all know it’ll be years before it’s fully up and running.
well there it is, 4g in the uk, is officially ridiculous, fast speed encouraging usage, but bam 5 minutes later, all your data plan has gone.
well done EE.
So disappointed by EE’s prices. For me, unlimited data will always win out over faster speeds. I’m currently paying £15 a month for unlimited data with 3 — while it’ll be a shame to miss out on 4G, I just can’t waste time worrying about maxing out my data allowance, and faffing about with data bolt-ons and the like.
My sentiments exactly. Very disappointed. EE are the first there and it’s a shame they didn’t run with EE as a data network (who uses minutes and texts anymore?!) and have T-Mobile/Orange as a “traditional” network provider.
Instead they chose the “we are first so we can go ahead charge anything we want”.
Unfortunately it looks like EE have just set the bar for LTE pricing in the UK, I imagine O2 and Vodafone will follow suit, maybe 3 will shake things up a bit?
oh and 500MB is a JOKE. EE shouldn’t even mention such ridiculousness.
I know, I could barely contain myself when they spat that out last night. If you genuinely hit 30Mbit or even 100Mbit theoretical, you could fart and use that much data.
Their absolute bottom tier should be 3GB. This is a new network, that people will be joining solely for 4G data services. Selling them 4G data speeds with a cap of 500MB is like selling champagne luke-warm and flat.
I suspect EE are just exploiting their monopoly position (they’re a business, what do you expect). If nothing else, when the other networks get started the competition should bring prices down. Personally, I’m happy to leave it another year rather than getting screwed for a service with patchy availability.
Did people really expect anything better. It’ll fall on it’s arse and by new year they will have new prices.
They really need to be offer unlimited, if no that then something better the a crappy 1GB.
you make a good point, we are so frequently disappointed by companies, we should just expect it now.
but i think that there is always that little glimmer of hope that a company will do the right thing by its customers.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha…. wait…. hahahahahahahahahaha… can’t…. stop….. laughing……. hahahahahahaha….
What a ridiculous pricing structure! No chance. I was genuinely excited by 4G but now, they can just go bum.
can you imagine the calls we’re going to get
EE: did you know we can offer faster speed so you can download faster than ever before.
Stupid average customer: ok that sounds good
EE: everything will be the same as you have now, just faster, and we want more of your money
Stupid average customer: ok sounds ok sign me up
one month later
Stupid average customer: how come my bill is so high?
Well, at least they are going to switch data off when you hit the limit to stop unnecessary charging of customers.
I also just laughed at the 50MB for £3 “add on” thing too.
Sometimes I really think the UK mobile industry is clueless…
Don’t understand a lot of the negative comments. I might be missing something but I am generally impressed that the cost is not that much more than 3G. Remember when that was launched and the cost was quite a bit more than 2G. I am currently on £36pm with Orange (iPhone 5) and pay £36pm for 1GB of data. From what I understand I can pay the same but for 500MB. I don’t use this amount as it is so will be upgrading for no extra cost – brilliant.
The thing is that you might find that you will go through that 500MB more because the data rate on the phone is a lot faster. Maybe not, but it’s a definite possibility.
EE’s selling point is data speeds, but who is going to care when they start burning through their 500MB in no time at all because LTE is so fast?
May I be so bold as to suggest that if you don’t use 500MB per month of mobile data, you have precious little need for 4G services at any price.
Exactly @tednol. When the price is as stupidly high as they are charging, 3G is the better plan.
And I don’t believe in the old excuse of “well when 3G launched it was expensive too”, as times and tech have changed, people are usually more clued in to what they should pay, and when they are being taken to a dark alley and be mugged.
Finally, £36 for 1gb? You are being ripped off. I pay £10 a month unlimited data, and that includes free minutes and texts.
Orange have never been the cheapest out there, but remember that part of that £36 is for the subsidy of the handset as well (even though it carries a shocking £109 up front cost)
fun fact I just discovered:
-An iPhone 5 on Orange on their £36 a month tariff has an up-front cost of £109
-An iPhone 5 on EE on their £36 a month tariff costs £179.
Ah that’s true. Call it my extreme aversion to signing up to two year contracts. And yes it is shocking how much you still have to pay upfront for the phone for those price plans, though as you’ve mentioned, that also applies to some 3G contracts as well.
You’re the ideal Customer they are looking for James having an iPhone5 shows you are willing to pay through the nose.
You obviously hardly use 3G and plan the same usage of 4G e.g. not streaming movies, playing online games, streaming music on the move, you know all those things their adverts suggest you can do with the extra speed.
I think you should sign up, the extra speed will be mostly wasted on the sort of small data transfer things you do though.
Turns out that the other mobile companies have nothing to worry about.
What amazes me is that Ofcom allowed this monopoly to exist, and allowed it whilst claiming it was in the public interest! Jokers.
Says it all
http://i49.tinypic.com/4qoknd.jpg
I guess now T-Mo and Orange are one big corporate entity known as EE, there’ll be no more ‘truly unlimited’ data from T-Mobile? Thank goodness I’m granfathered.
I believe that they aren’t planning to make any big changes to T-Mo and Orange, with T-mobile being a “cheaper” brand of the two, so maybe unlimited data will stick around.
I think that a £56/mo 24 month plan which gets me a Lumia 920 for £20 extra is not all that bad. Deduct the price of the phone and you have a monthly network fee of £36 for 8GB capped 4G. It’s not going to be much cheaper for some time..
How am I supposed to watch my furry porn on the go with data caps!? HOW!?
you’ll go blind, not to mention get arrested.
On another note how do Apple justify the price difference which I assume EE are just passing on between the iPhone5 16Gb/32Gb/64Gb. Memory is cheap the manufacturing cost difference will be miniscle.
Guess they are just gouging punters because with lack of memory expansion support they can.
I think the sort of people who queued to buy an iPhone5 will be the real early adopters. e.g. mostly technically clueless and very open to marketing hype.
I’m using about 50gb a month with three, I don’t even have road and at home and tether my iMac via my galaxy note……. I can’t even imagine how quick their 4g will be….I can’t wait…. I downloaded an app on Tmobile sim and used the whole months allowance in one app…. An 8gb plan with ee is £56. Wow I can stream 6 HD films if I’m lucky….. Poke it up your arse ee
No minutes in tariffs, it will just be one 4g data tarrif by 3….. Half my calls are made using tango and Skype, most messaging is done via what’s app or email….. With 4g speeds and VoIP. Minutes and texts will be a thing of the past. It will be just unlimited everything using 4g