9 ms·

Two Countries, Two Vastly Different Phone Bills

49 points by fideloper 12y ago

ksec 12y ago
Britain has forced companies to lease their networks to competitors at cost? So anyone could just enter the market?
- dozzie 12y ago
  Yes, pretty much. That's the point of the regulatory required by EU, which UK implemented.
  - abritishguy 12y ago
    Well not really.
- nickjackson 12y ago
  giffgaff is a great example of this, a very small company that piggy-backs on the O2 network, giving really cheap tarifs. http://giffgaff.com/goodybags http://giffgaff.com/goodybags
  - jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
    Giffgaff is an MVNO, that's true, but it is actually owned by O2.
- cperciva 12y ago
  So anyone could just enter the market? Better question, why would anyone ever build a network if they are prohibited from making a profit?
  - akie 12y ago
    They are still making a significant profit, but not as much as they would without this legislation.
  - sgift 12y ago
    That kind of legislation usually is only relevant for the "incumbent" (because the rules usually state "if you have more than x% of the lines .."), i.e. the ex-monopoly provider who didn't build anything. It was build by tax payer money and then given to them.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Not mobile networks.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  This isn't true. This is only true for broadband. The article is wrong.
- izacus 12y ago
  That's a rather common practice to fight natural monopolies - here in Slovenia the largest operator (which was merged together from a landline / mobile / ISP) has to provide it's own networks (landline / FTTH / mobile) to competitors at a market price. Keeps the competition going and benefits users.
- martinald 12y ago
  The article is wrong. It's for fixed line broadband. Though there are a lot of cell/network sharing agreements in the market (to various extents - some are actually cell roaming but some are just sharing backhaul/fibre/the physical towers): O2 and Vodafone Orange and TMobile (merged to form EE) Three and TMobile (may or may not include ex-Orange sites, not sure).
Falkon1313 12y ago
I've always gone with the no-contract plans. I pay $35/month for the same phone and unlimited service that one of my family members is paying $100/month for. Really I don't see the point of the contract plans.
- mixmastamyk 12y ago
  Right, I took it on the chin to buy my phone, but overall the cost is much less. Some months I pay nothing at all.
- aceofspades19 12y ago
  I got my nexus 4 for 'free' on a contract and even if I bought it outright and got on the cheapest plan with roughly the same features, I would've only saved $5 a month. 5 * 24( 2 year contract) is only 120 so by going on a contract I saved at least $100 on the cost of my phone. If you are smart you can save money by going on a contract.
  - __xtrimsky 12y ago
    I don't think you researched well enough, 5$ saving is nothing. tell us which plans you were deciding between. For example Straight Talk, is 45$ / month, everything unlimited. And you can use either AT&T's coverage, either T-Mobile's or Verizon's (and their phone too). And that's for everything unlimited, you can find cheaper if you don't need unlimited.
    - aceofspades19 12y ago
      Well I'm in Canada so straight talk is unavailable. As far as I know there is no provider that offers unlimited plans for everything at a reasonable cost. I'm with Fido and my plan is $45/month with 200 mb data, 200 weekday minutes canada-wide, unlimited evenings and weekends, unlimited SMS and MMS. The cheapest plan they offer that includes data is $39/month. The cheapest plan period that isn't prepaid that I've seen from any canadian provider is $35/month. So if I spent $10 less a month which is $288 for 2 years, it would just barely cover the cost of the phone and I wouldn't have any data either. So in the best case I wouldn't save any money by buying my own phone.
abritishguy 12y ago
I've always found it funny that it is cheaper to use my UK monthly rolling contract in America (free roaming yay) than it is to have an American contract - completely bizarre.
- gress 12y ago
  Which contract is that, and from which operator?
  - abritishguy 12y ago
    Any of three's contracts with unlimited data.
  - robin_reala 12y ago
    http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home
kleiba 12y ago
Just curious, but is it possible to give the costs for comparable contracts in other countries, too?
- seszett 12y ago
  I'm paying 20€/month in France, for unlimited calls (to France and a large part of the world) and texts as well as 3 GB data (20 GB over 4G, but my phone can't use that). A phone isn't included in the contract (the contract can be stopped anytime) but my provider (Free) also sells phones on credit, say an iPhone 5s for 49€ one time payment and then 16€/month over 24 months. That makes a close equivalent of the US contract, for 38€/month or about 50$/month. Also, in reality I'm paying 4€/month for this contract for the first 12 months because of a promotion back in June.
  - emixam 12y ago
    Also noteworthy: you won't be charged if you use more than 3GB/month of data, only the download speed is reduced
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  I'm paying, in Portugal, ~100€/month for a plan that includes 100mbps fiber, land-line and service for four cellphones. National calls are unlimited. Data over fiber is unlimited. Data over cellphone is limited to 200MB per cellphone (add-ons to extend data usage exist). Cellphones themselves are not part of the plan.
- jnardiello 12y ago
  Italy is considered close to a third world country BUT as i can see it provides cheaper and better connectivity. No contract, unlimited data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts (but no phone): 10€/month. On a 30 months contract with everything unlimited and an iPhone 5s will costa about 35€/month. Which means abput 50$/month.
petercooper 12y ago
Three is awesome. I actually tether through my phone at work because getting ~10Mbps to myself over 3G beats sharing a 10Mbps leased line amongst about 20 offices. I always have YouTube or Twitch on in the background, etc, and never run into any problems. I pay something like £20 a month. To balance though, historically Internet access options were not good.. I was on dialup until about 2003, and then pretty horrific 1Mbps DSL until at least 2009 or so. The UK has done a great job at catching up somehow.
- cstross 12y ago
  Other things about Three: * The monthly contracts (and higher value pay-as-you-go top-ups) come with "Feel at Home" roaming -- in about 12 countries worldwide you can use your inclusive minutes, texts and data with no international roaming fees, i.e. you get that all-you-can-eat data overseas. Countries listed include the United States; on one recent 2-week trip to the USA I was able to use my iPhone for data as if I was at home with no added charges. * British phone tariffs do not charge you for receiving text messages. * The all-you-can-eat is capped (small print) at a "fair usage" of 25 Gb/month. Tethering is disabled while roaming overseas on "feel at home", but not prevented at home. * If you buy a smartphone from Three, they'll unlock it at any time, for free, on request. * In non "feel-at-home" countries they'll give you 24 hours' data (capped at 500Mb) for £5. Not as good, but better than typical international roaming fees (at £0.5/Mb in the EU and up to £3/Mb outside the EU). Those of us who are used to this kind of cell service boggle in amazement about how backward the US carriers are. The final irony? Three is pretty backward and expensive compared to what Estonians get from their cellcos ... the UK is by no means the best world-wide, it's just a handy point of reference.
  - martinald 12y ago
    There is no 25GB limit on the AYCE. I've pushed nearly 500GB one month tethering on 4G (my old apartment had very slow upload and could get about 20mbit up on 4G - great for server restorations and bulk data transfers) and many times over 25GB and have never got a letter. From the Three 'small print': So in essence there is a limit of how much data you can actually consume which is up to 1000GB. All this means that you can have absolute peace of mind and enjoy all the internet you need on your smartphone, without worrying. Basically, the limit is about 1TB/month.
chrismeller 12y ago
I would think that one of the "several factors involved" may dwarf regulation: area. The UK operators have 94,000 square miles to cover while US operators have a little over 3.1 million, just in the lower 48. Obviously no single carrier is ever going to cover 100% of either country (and in the US in in particular they don't come even close), but the simple size of the problem in the US drives their infrastructure costs way up. If AT&T only had to cover the state of Michigan (96,000 square miles) they could probably do it for less than $60 a month... I agree that we don't have nearly enough competition in the US, but let's not pretend that a few more "harmless" laws will make everything rosy and perfect.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Well that doesn't explain why it is cheaper for me as a Brit to roam using my UK contract in the US than it is to take out a US contract. When I'm visiting America I am literally paying less than you folks for your stuff. I can go to US and use unlimited data for no extra charge.
  - chrismeller 12y ago
    No, it doesn't. Not knowing much about the UK market, I don't really have enough information to base an opinion on. My first wild guess would again be regulatory: do they have to eat the extra costs involved so they provide you with the same price every month?
    - foldr 12y ago
      Three offer unlimited roaming data in the US. They're not under any regulatory obligation to do so, and they presumably must be paying the network providers. I live in Canada right now, which is even worse than the US in this respect, and it is infinitely cheaper for me to use my British SIM in the US than it is for me to use my Canadian one. That's kind of nuts.
    - abritishguy 12y ago
      >My first wild guess would again be regulatory: do they have to eat the extra costs involved so they provide you with the same price every month? Nope, only one network does it (the same network in the article) and it is one of their many great features.
abritishguy 12y ago
I would like to point out that the following part of the article is not true (she was probably getting confused with broadband): "Britain has forced companies to lease their networks to competitors at cost"
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  Actually, the original mobile network licences issued back in the '80s required that the licence-holders sell airtime to any service provider who asks for it, at the same price and conditions offered to the service providers owned/controlled by the licence-holders. That paved the way for MVNOs.
RichardFord 12y ago
I pay about $75 for 2 gigabytes from Verizon, so I don't know where these numbers are coming from.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Do you get unlimited texts and calls? Because without that the UK price drops to £15/month.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
anemitz 12y ago
It's worth noting that the billing methods for US and the rest of Europe are very different when it comes to voice. For instance, it costs between 4c/min to 26c/min to call a UK mobile phone. In the US it's < 1c/min. Outside the US, the caller of a mobile phone is generally the party footing the bill for the entire call. The more interesting question I have is why would it cost 26c/min to call a mobile phone? And since each carrier prefix may have a different cost, how do consumers keep all these prefixes / carrier rates straight in their heads? Edit: I'm looking at flowroute, plivo, and twilio.
- martinald 12y ago
  Not correct and I don't know where you get those prices from. OFCOM has regulated termination charges (http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/mtr/statement http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/mtr/statement) in the UK. Right now they are at 0.8p/min but it is likely they are going to rule to drop them to below 0.5p/min. Edit: these are wholesale prices, so there will be some overheads for whoever provides it to end users, but the crazy termination fees in the UK are long gone.
  - anemitz 12y ago
    Where does the overhead come when you look at rates from carriers like http://flowroute.com/rates/ http://flowroute.com/rates/ or https://www.plivo.com/pricing/GB/ https://www.plivo.com/pricing/GB/ or http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing/gb http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing/gb It might be that wholesale rates are capped but it clearly isn't pushing prices down for consumers who want to call into mobile numbers.
    - martinald 12y ago
      2.65c/min on Plivo? The other prefixes are more 'premium rate' numbers, not mobile numbers. That's about 1.5p/min. Considering Plivo charges 1.2c/min for US numbers as a benchmark, the difference between US and UK numbers is 1.45c/min or... 0.88p/min, exactly the wholesale cost pretty much. So I think it is working.
- 12y ago
lostmsu 12y ago
FreedomPop
__xtrimsky 12y ago
I pay 45$ / month for everything unlimited with Straight Talk (uses AT&T's coverage). And my wife pays 30$ for 100 minutes, unlimited text and 5GB data with T-Mobile. even 67$ I find that pretty expensive.
- mlucero 12y ago
  I am switching to that 30$ plan as a result of this post. Just saved me half the cost of my monthly bill. Thanks!

49 points by fideloper 12y ago

ksec 12y ago

Britain has forced companies to lease their networks to competitors at cost? So anyone could just enter the market?

dozzie 12y ago
Yes, pretty much. That's the point of the regulatory required by EU, which UK implemented.
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Well not really.
nickjackson 12y ago
giffgaff is a great example of this, a very small company that piggy-backs on the O2 network, giving really cheap tarifs. http://giffgaff.com/goodybags http://giffgaff.com/goodybags
- jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
  Giffgaff is an MVNO, that's true, but it is actually owned by O2.
cperciva 12y ago
So anyone could just enter the market? Better question, why would anyone ever build a network if they are prohibited from making a profit?
- akie 12y ago
  They are still making a significant profit, but not as much as they would without this legislation.
- sgift 12y ago
  That kind of legislation usually is only relevant for the "incumbent" (because the rules usually state "if you have more than x% of the lines .."), i.e. the ex-monopoly provider who didn't build anything. It was build by tax payer money and then given to them.
abritishguy 12y ago
Not mobile networks.
abritishguy 12y ago
This isn't true. This is only true for broadband. The article is wrong.
izacus 12y ago
That's a rather common practice to fight natural monopolies - here in Slovenia the largest operator (which was merged together from a landline / mobile / ISP) has to provide it's own networks (landline / FTTH / mobile) to competitors at a market price. Keeps the competition going and benefits users.
martinald 12y ago
The article is wrong. It's for fixed line broadband. Though there are a lot of cell/network sharing agreements in the market (to various extents - some are actually cell roaming but some are just sharing backhaul/fibre/the physical towers): O2 and Vodafone Orange and TMobile (merged to form EE) Three and TMobile (may or may not include ex-Orange sites, not sure).

Falkon1313 12y ago

I've always gone with the no-contract plans. I pay $35/month for the same phone and unlimited service that one of my family members is paying $100/month for. Really I don't see the point of the contract plans.

mixmastamyk 12y ago
Right, I took it on the chin to buy my phone, but overall the cost is much less. Some months I pay nothing at all.
aceofspades19 12y ago
I got my nexus 4 for 'free' on a contract and even if I bought it outright and got on the cheapest plan with roughly the same features, I would've only saved $5 a month. 5 * 24( 2 year contract) is only 120 so by going on a contract I saved at least $100 on the cost of my phone. If you are smart you can save money by going on a contract.
- __xtrimsky 12y ago
  I don't think you researched well enough, 5$ saving is nothing. tell us which plans you were deciding between. For example Straight Talk, is 45$ / month, everything unlimited. And you can use either AT&T's coverage, either T-Mobile's or Verizon's (and their phone too). And that's for everything unlimited, you can find cheaper if you don't need unlimited.
  - aceofspades19 12y ago
    Well I'm in Canada so straight talk is unavailable. As far as I know there is no provider that offers unlimited plans for everything at a reasonable cost. I'm with Fido and my plan is $45/month with 200 mb data, 200 weekday minutes canada-wide, unlimited evenings and weekends, unlimited SMS and MMS. The cheapest plan they offer that includes data is $39/month. The cheapest plan period that isn't prepaid that I've seen from any canadian provider is $35/month. So if I spent $10 less a month which is $288 for 2 years, it would just barely cover the cost of the phone and I wouldn't have any data either. So in the best case I wouldn't save any money by buying my own phone.

abritishguy 12y ago

I've always found it funny that it is cheaper to use my UK monthly rolling contract in America (free roaming yay) than it is to have an American contract - completely bizarre.

gress 12y ago
Which contract is that, and from which operator?
- abritishguy 12y ago
  Any of three's contracts with unlimited data.
- robin_reala 12y ago
  http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home

kleiba 12y ago

Just curious, but is it possible to give the costs for comparable contracts in other countries, too?

seszett 12y ago
I'm paying 20€/month in France, for unlimited calls (to France and a large part of the world) and texts as well as 3 GB data (20 GB over 4G, but my phone can't use that). A phone isn't included in the contract (the contract can be stopped anytime) but my provider (Free) also sells phones on credit, say an iPhone 5s for 49€ one time payment and then 16€/month over 24 months. That makes a close equivalent of the US contract, for 38€/month or about 50$/month. Also, in reality I'm paying 4€/month for this contract for the first 12 months because of a promotion back in June.
- emixam 12y ago
  Also noteworthy: you won't be charged if you use more than 3GB/month of data, only the download speed is reduced
sergiosgc 12y ago
I'm paying, in Portugal, ~100€/month for a plan that includes 100mbps fiber, land-line and service for four cellphones. National calls are unlimited. Data over fiber is unlimited. Data over cellphone is limited to 200MB per cellphone (add-ons to extend data usage exist). Cellphones themselves are not part of the plan.
jnardiello 12y ago
Italy is considered close to a third world country BUT as i can see it provides cheaper and better connectivity. No contract, unlimited data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts (but no phone): 10€/month. On a 30 months contract with everything unlimited and an iPhone 5s will costa about 35€/month. Which means abput 50$/month.

petercooper 12y ago

Three is awesome. I actually tether through my phone at work because getting ~10Mbps to myself over 3G beats sharing a 10Mbps leased line amongst about 20 offices. I always have YouTube or Twitch on in the background, etc, and never run into any problems. I pay something like £20 a month. To balance though, historically Internet access options were not good.. I was on dialup until about 2003, and then pretty horrific 1Mbps DSL until at least 2009 or so. The UK has done a great job at catching up somehow.

cstross 12y ago
Other things about Three: * The monthly contracts (and higher value pay-as-you-go top-ups) come with "Feel at Home" roaming -- in about 12 countries worldwide you can use your inclusive minutes, texts and data with no international roaming fees, i.e. you get that all-you-can-eat data overseas. Countries listed include the United States; on one recent 2-week trip to the USA I was able to use my iPhone for data as if I was at home with no added charges. * British phone tariffs do not charge you for receiving text messages. * The all-you-can-eat is capped (small print) at a "fair usage" of 25 Gb/month. Tethering is disabled while roaming overseas on "feel at home", but not prevented at home. * If you buy a smartphone from Three, they'll unlock it at any time, for free, on request. * In non "feel-at-home" countries they'll give you 24 hours' data (capped at 500Mb) for £5. Not as good, but better than typical international roaming fees (at £0.5/Mb in the EU and up to £3/Mb outside the EU). Those of us who are used to this kind of cell service boggle in amazement about how backward the US carriers are. The final irony? Three is pretty backward and expensive compared to what Estonians get from their cellcos ... the UK is by no means the best world-wide, it's just a handy point of reference.
- martinald 12y ago
  There is no 25GB limit on the AYCE. I've pushed nearly 500GB one month tethering on 4G (my old apartment had very slow upload and could get about 20mbit up on 4G - great for server restorations and bulk data transfers) and many times over 25GB and have never got a letter. From the Three 'small print': So in essence there is a limit of how much data you can actually consume which is up to 1000GB. All this means that you can have absolute peace of mind and enjoy all the internet you need on your smartphone, without worrying. Basically, the limit is about 1TB/month.

chrismeller 12y ago

I would think that one of the "several factors involved" may dwarf regulation: area. The UK operators have 94,000 square miles to cover while US operators have a little over 3.1 million, just in the lower 48. Obviously no single carrier is ever going to cover 100% of either country (and in the US in in particular they don't come even close), but the simple size of the problem in the US drives their infrastructure costs way up. If AT&T only had to cover the state of Michigan (96,000 square miles) they could probably do it for less than $60 a month... I agree that we don't have nearly enough competition in the US, but let's not pretend that a few more "harmless" laws will make everything rosy and perfect.

abritishguy 12y ago
Well that doesn't explain why it is cheaper for me as a Brit to roam using my UK contract in the US than it is to take out a US contract. When I'm visiting America I am literally paying less than you folks for your stuff. I can go to US and use unlimited data for no extra charge.
- chrismeller 12y ago
  No, it doesn't. Not knowing much about the UK market, I don't really have enough information to base an opinion on. My first wild guess would again be regulatory: do they have to eat the extra costs involved so they provide you with the same price every month?
  - foldr 12y ago
    Three offer unlimited roaming data in the US. They're not under any regulatory obligation to do so, and they presumably must be paying the network providers. I live in Canada right now, which is even worse than the US in this respect, and it is infinitely cheaper for me to use my British SIM in the US than it is for me to use my Canadian one. That's kind of nuts.
  - abritishguy 12y ago
    >My first wild guess would again be regulatory: do they have to eat the extra costs involved so they provide you with the same price every month? Nope, only one network does it (the same network in the article) and it is one of their many great features.

abritishguy 12y ago

I would like to point out that the following part of the article is not true (she was probably getting confused with broadband): "Britain has forced companies to lease their networks to competitors at cost"

jackgavigan 12y ago
Actually, the original mobile network licences issued back in the '80s required that the licence-holders sell airtime to any service provider who asks for it, at the same price and conditions offered to the service providers owned/controlled by the licence-holders. That paved the way for MVNOs.

RichardFord 12y ago

I pay about $75 for 2 gigabytes from Verizon, so I don't know where these numbers are coming from.

abritishguy 12y ago
Do you get unlimited texts and calls? Because without that the UK price drops to £15/month.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

anemitz 12y ago

It's worth noting that the billing methods for US and the rest of Europe are very different when it comes to voice. For instance, it costs between 4c/min to 26c/min to call a UK mobile phone. In the US it's < 1c/min. Outside the US, the caller of a mobile phone is generally the party footing the bill for the entire call. The more interesting question I have is why would it cost 26c/min to call a mobile phone? And since each carrier prefix may have a different cost, how do consumers keep all these prefixes / carrier rates straight in their heads? Edit: I'm looking at flowroute, plivo, and twilio.

martinald 12y ago
Not correct and I don't know where you get those prices from. OFCOM has regulated termination charges (http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/mtr/statement http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/mtr/statement) in the UK. Right now they are at 0.8p/min but it is likely they are going to rule to drop them to below 0.5p/min. Edit: these are wholesale prices, so there will be some overheads for whoever provides it to end users, but the crazy termination fees in the UK are long gone.
- anemitz 12y ago
  Where does the overhead come when you look at rates from carriers like http://flowroute.com/rates/ http://flowroute.com/rates/ or https://www.plivo.com/pricing/GB/ https://www.plivo.com/pricing/GB/ or http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing/gb http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing/gb It might be that wholesale rates are capped but it clearly isn't pushing prices down for consumers who want to call into mobile numbers.
  - martinald 12y ago
    2.65c/min on Plivo? The other prefixes are more 'premium rate' numbers, not mobile numbers. That's about 1.5p/min. Considering Plivo charges 1.2c/min for US numbers as a benchmark, the difference between US and UK numbers is 1.45c/min or... 0.88p/min, exactly the wholesale cost pretty much. So I think it is working.
12y ago

lostmsu 12y ago

FreedomPop

__xtrimsky 12y ago

I pay 45$ / month for everything unlimited with Straight Talk (uses AT&T's coverage). And my wife pays 30$ for 100 minutes, unlimited text and 5GB data with T-Mobile. even 67$ I find that pretty expensive.

mlucero 12y ago
I am switching to that 30$ plan as a result of this post. Just saved me half the cost of my monthly bill. Thanks!