It has been a while since I last updated this blog - sorry.
I have had a rough start to 2016.
My employer of five years has been getting progressively worse. I have spent the last two years in a thankless job doing QA work on products that simply aren't fit for purpose. As a Quality Inspector, there is a limit as to how much I was willing to put my name to a product that doesn't fit the bill.
In addition, the fact that 75% of my time was spent sitting around waiting for work to come in, I couldn't justify this to myself and have taken the decision to leave my current employer.
I am still involved with a few minor projects in the mobile industry. No matter what job I do as my main focus, I will always have an interest in mobile telecommunications.
So, time for a blog update!
2015 saw me test out a few mobile networks for myself. Most notably giffgaff.
Whilst I spent several years being unable to use O2/giffgaff as a network due to their patchy coverage, I followed giffgaff's growth. I first joined the network in 2014, but it was short lived - Their data coverage is very poor and when I did manage to get a data connection on my phone, it didn't work.
In 2015, I tried again - mainly due to giffgaff offering 4G for no additional cost in my area.
It was a waste of time and money: The data speeds on giffgaff are useless. I struggled to use email on my phone, which has been a pretty bad introduction to 4G.
Recently, I updated my mobile network reviews on my website (mobile-networks-uk.weebly.com/mobile-network-reviews.html), which I'm sorry to say for giffgaff, haven't painted their network in a good light.
After my second bad experience with giffgaff, I returned (again) to Three.
My mobile usage has dropped recently, so 321 PAYG on Three was costing me around £5 a month, which is hard to beat. This low cost, combined with the reliability of the Three network meant that I was even considering taking a contract with them.
However, a few weeks ago I was playing around with an EE PAYG SIM card and found that I not only got 3-4 bars of signal (0-2 bars was the previous average in this area), but it was HSDPA.
A few checks on the coverage maps confirmed that EE now provide very good coverage for 2G, 3G and reasonable 4G across my entire area now.
There are a number of EE MVNOs, and currently USwitch are offering some good exclusive deals on Life Mobile.
Life Mobile (via USwitch) provide 1500 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data for £6 a month, on a one month rolling contract. Customer support is UK based, and I've already found them to be very good, friendly and efficient - They even reply to emails personally and effectively.
Given that I can easily go over a £5 monthly spend on my mobile, this £6 a month package should cover all of my needs. It really is fantastic value.
If I need more data, I can just call up customer services and have a very reasonably priced bundle added to my tariff for that month, which is great.
My own quest for the best value PAYG mobile tariffs continues, but I feel that at this point I have to admit that I feel that £6 for such a good 30 day SIM only contract can't be beaten. I'm not tied in to a contract (it's a 30 day contract, people!), it covers all of my requirements and most importantly the signal is reliable.
As much as I try to champion PAYG bundles, no network can beat SIM only deals as good as this one - Why should we pay more when we can get more, for less?
