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Originally Posted by Kushan

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?

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.

Part of the reason I'm on said contract is the unlimited data and the phone that comes with it (Right now, a shiny new Galaxy Note 3 - hence why I'm particularly interested in the capabilities of CAT-4 LTE/LTE-A). At the Sim-free price of the phone and the equivalent SIM-only tariff, I end up paying nearly the same anyway over the 2 years.

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 ----------

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

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

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?

£36 a month may be the average I take your word for it, but thats a LOT of cash to spend on a phone service. I pay O2 under £14 for 800 mins + unlimited landline calls.

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.

I suspect your £17 option is a package that is barely useable with minimum minutes and data usage.

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.

Where is the £17 month option, I picked s4 mini on tesco mobile and the lowest is £23 month. which is the cheapest listed on this page.

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.

£17 a month for 2 years is £408 for the phone, not cheap.

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.

Yes people are buying 4G, but remember there is 10s of millions of people who dont have that spending power, some people cant even afford contracts at all and just have payg phones.

Thats why I said the true barrier is the cost of the phone, eventually £100 phones will have 4G and when they do is when we start seeing mainstream adoption of 4G.

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.

I have noticed lately tho my mobile signal is weak in my area, and some googling shows news stories about mobile networks supposedbly turning down 3g/2g signals to get people to sign up to 4g.

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.

But I dont care about 4G adoption, not sure why we debating it either on a STM thread The main thing is 4G availability is increasing and competition is increasing which is a good thing, I think thats more the point you want to make.

Derp

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

Originally Posted by Qtx

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.

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

Spoiler: 

Analysis of phone bills by academics at Oxford University found that approximately three-quarters of all mobile users were on the wrong contract and that the average consumer could save approximately £195 per year.

The average mobile phone bill in the UK is currently £439 per year, indicating that consumers are paying 44 per cent too much.

Users who were willing to keep their current mobile phone and switch to a new “SIM-only” contract could save an average of £250 per year.

The research also indicated that customers spend £3.5bn on calls, messaging and data services that were outside the contracts they were paying for.

“We found that people consistently over-estimate how many minutes they need by a factor of about four,” he said. If people chose a cheaper tariff that provided still provided a sufficient buffer, significant savings could be made.

More than half of people were on a tariff that was “too large”, costing a total of £2.6bn, while 29 per cent were paying punitive rates for services outside their contract allowances (£1.53bn). A further £750m was wasted by people who were getting the right number of minutes for phone calls but were not taking advantage of better rates, for instance on longer contracts.

Prof Holmes also said that a significant proportion of customers could not only cut their annual bills but also get a new mobile handset at the same time. Half of those who wanted an Apple iPhone 4 could typically save a total of £156 per year, for instance.

Approximately half of all users who were on the correct tariff had negotiated a price that was not advertised. As such, they too often had far more minutes than they needed, but a smaller tariff would still be more expensive.

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

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

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

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 ----------

Originally Posted by everyday

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!

Ermm not quite.

So the unlocked markup is massive! The iphone 4S cost apple £81.87 to build and the 5 was £103 to build.

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.