As I've mentioned before I'm a pretty dissatisfied Virgin customer. My contract is up and I'd liek to go back to orange/EE. I was very happy there for nine years until Virgin tricked me into leaving. I was just wondering what opinions are on my switching back.

I use data a fair bit now, but nothing in the region of some of the Three fiends on here - although I may get a tablet at some point so the option to tether and use a bit more data would be nice. 2 Gb has probably been about my max since I've been with Virgin. I have no experience of Orange/EE's data network as I never owned a smartphone while I was with them. In fact that was the reason I moved - I wanted one and was very wary about using data indeed - I once ran up a three-figure bill on WAP (!) and was swayed by the peace of mind Virgin's oh-so-temporary offer of unlimited internet.

Virgin and EE use the same network for 2G/3G. There isn't going to be a huge difference unless you're going for a 4G phone.

On EE you can't run up a bill because your data is capped. So if you hit your data limit it'll just stop and you have the option to buy more data if you need to.

If you want to switch then just switch. Choose a phone and tariff and then get a PAC from Virgin, sign up with EE, then use the PAC to transfer your number.