Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq (Post 35633531)

It's not extortionate anymore when it starts at £18.99 a month, Tesco Mobile are doing 4G for £12.50 a month SIM-only or £17.50 a month with a free handset.

Not sure where you get the £100 price point from, but over 50% of phone sales have been smartphones for several years, and the average person spends over £36 a month on their mobile bill, which incidentally also equates to an overspend of £195 per year from being on the wrong contract. At the £36 a month price point, just about everything short of the £550 iPhone 5s is free on contract so to be honest most people should be getting a free £500+ phone with their contract. Or by switching to a more appropriate contract the average person could save enough money each year to pay for a second 4G contract *and* a new 4G phone.

Incidentally, UK's weighted average puts things 62% cheaper than Germany and 45% cheaper than the USA for heavy mobile users when all costs (contract + handset) are included.

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq (Post 35633531)

Not sure where you get the £100 price point from, but over 50% of phone sales have been smartphones for several years, and the average person spends over £36 a month on their mobile bill, which incidentally also equates to an overspend of £195 per year from being on the wrong contract.

Originally Posted by Qtx (Post 35633685)

If the average is that high, must mean that people are getting lower tariffs then building the bill up with charges. I got the Three one plan + a 'free' Galaxy S3 a year ago, which gives unlimited data, text and 2.5k minutes or something, all for £29. Still paying that same price a year later and it's only been a couple of 0845 numbers on a couple of occasions that have pushed it over. Find it crazy that £36 is the average bill.

Originally Posted by Kushan (Post 35633654)

I've always wondered about that statistic of being on the "wrong" contract. My contract with Three gives me 600mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data - I probably use less than 10mins a month and maybe only about 100 texts as everything is done via the data these days - so would I qualify as being on the "wrong" contract?

Originally Posted by Chrysalis (Post 35633682)

In germany I can get a S4 mini for £100 cheaper than uk.
S3 LTE £150 cheaper.

Originally Posted by Qtx (Post 35633685)

If the average is that high, must mean that people are getting lower tariffs then building the bill up with charges. I got the Three one plan + a 'free' Galaxy S3 a year ago, which gives unlimited data, text and 2.5k minutes or something, all for £29. Still paying that same price a year later and it's only been a couple of 0845 numbers on a couple of occasions that have pushed it over. Find it crazy that £36 is the average bill.

Originally Posted by Chrysalis (Post 35633688)

One of my sister's upgrades her phone every 2-3 years on contract, but the phone she is getting this time is the iphone4s not the iphone5

Originally Posted by everyday (Post 35633722)

Bear in mine that these phones are less when you buy them in 100 pcs (according to the internet) and then if you buy them in the 100.000's they come down to about £125 a shot!

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq (Post 35633767)

Probably. You've not mentioned what tariff you're on or how much you pay so it's hard to tell. They don't seem to offer a comparable tariff anymore on their website but if you only use 10 minutes then unlimited data with that sort of usage starts at around £12 a month. Though you've also not said how much data you use so we don't know if you actually need unlimited data or not.


You probably would, subsidies aren't nearly as good as they used to be, but part of the problem is most people who are entitled to a new top-end smartphone aren't actually getting one, yet continuing to pay as if they are.

---------- Post added at 17:16 ---------- Previous post was at 16:57 ----------


http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/mar...rnational/2.05

Not so much "I found" prices but weighed averages across all major operators in each country. See how "Connection 9" costs £55 a month in the UK but an equivalent package would cost £142 a month in Germany?


I think £48 a month is a lot to spend on a cable service that you can only use at home but yet, that's Virgin Media's ARPU. I've never paid them more than £25.


Well of course if you use more you can expect to pay more. Though 250 minutes and 500MB data is actually more than I got from Vodafone last year for £36 a month. Tesco Mobile insists 4G only costs £2.50 a month more than their existing non-4G tariffs.


http://shop.tescomobile.com/4g

As you can see there are two 4G handsets for £17.50 a month, whichi is what I said, not £17.


Yet people not getting a new phone are paying an average of £36 a month so clearly the public's idea of "cheap" seems to differ from yours.


Some people can't afford food either, but the average person has no problem paying £36 a month for their phone. Just cause a few people can't afford food, do we consider food as "not mainstream"? As far as I see it if the majority of people can happily afford *twice* the cost of 4G, I don't see price as a barrier.


Tinfoil hat time... While that's a whole new kettle of fish, yes there are margin cases where 2G/3G signals will theoretically have to be turned down to accommodate 4G but it is not widespread and it is not a deliberate ploy to get people to sign up. Mostly where there is no space for additional antennas the existing ones will have to handle the additional power load of the new signals as well as the new peak power that arises from resonance effects and so on that can cause arcing and equipment degradation. But that's pretty rare.

For one it's completely counterproductive to reduce 2G/3G signal levels since 4G as deployed in the UK is incapable of handling phone calls. And since all major networks *only* sell 4G with unlimited phone calls 4G relies even more heavily on their 2G/3G networks to provide a satisfactory user experience.


Derp :p:

---------- Post added at 17:32 ---------- Previous post was at 17:16 ----------


Or just lazy and ignorant and don't care about such trivial amounts of money.

Same way some of us protest every single bank charge and demand they be refunded, while most people pay hundreds of pounds a year don't bat an eyelid. Or some of us religiously pay off our credit card bills in full every month to avoid interest, while others pay thousands of interest a year and just don't care. Meh.

Incidentally the figures are from research done by Oxford university on behalf of the OFCOM accredited Billmonitor.com



---------- Post added at 17:34 ---------- Previous post was at 17:32 ----------


Chances are then she's paying over the odds for at least 1 out of every 3 years unless switching tariffs multiple times, which most people don't do.

---------- Post added at 17:35 ---------- Previous post was at 17:34 ----------


Ermm not quite.


Also not true. You may be looking at teardowns that consider only the pure component cost.

Those components don't assemble themselves magically on a circuit board just by being thrown in the same box.

Originally Posted by Chrysalis (Post 35634030)

Tablets are just as bad. I find them aweful devices to use as well yet they are popular, limitations that make them barely useable, but when we look at the cost of tablets and what you get vs say a laptop, its clear tablets must have a much higher margin than laptops.

Originally Posted by Chrysalis (Post 35634030)

one doesnt need to work for apple/samsung to know that the prices are inflated.