[tdenson]

BT Mobile look to have some decent plans available. I am currently with EE on my main phone, toying with moving to BT. I believe they use EE's infrastructure - would I see any downside ?

[lightspeed2398]

Depends. BT is limited to "Single Speed' EE speeds or 30mbps. If you don't need more than that, which to be honest most people don't then it's no different to EE, except of course you can't tether, although that doesn't seem to be enforced at the moment but they could enforce it in the future.

[tdenson]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lightspeed2398

Depends. BT is limited to "Single Speed' EE speeds or 30mbps. If you don't need more than that, which to be honest most people don't then it's no different to EE, except of course you can't tether, although that doesn't seem to be enforced at the moment but they could enforce it in the future.

When limited to 3GB for the month, there seems little point in having speeds in excess of 30Mbits, it just gets you to the quota quicker.

[DevonBloke]

This is a popular misconception but it untrue.
Just because the speed is 60meg instead of 30meg doesn't mean you will do anything differently so you will use exactly the same amount of data regardless of speed.

Lightspeed is correct, nobody needs more than 30 meg at the moment since allowances don't allow for general land-line broadband replacement.
I'm a speed freak and total techie nerd so I don't need it, I WANT it!! Very sad!!

Where headline speeds are important is in general cell capacity. The faster the speeds the more people can connect and get things done quicker.
Internet use is generally bursty. A 5Mhz LTE cell can handle 200 simultaneous active users (actually transferring data) as full speed. There can be a lot more inactive users. The quicker the data packets can be delivered to each active handset, the more total (active and inactive) users the cell can handle without everything grinding to a halt.
10Mhz can do 400 users and 20Mhz 800 users, all at full speed..ish..

So in theory a 20Mgz EE cell (one sector on a three sectored mast) running at full speed (double) can accommodate a lot more active and inactive users than the same 20Mhz BT cell running at single speed.
Of course all these EE and BT users will be on the same cell so it's a way that EE can prioritise it's own users.

Jabba or Lucan will come along now and tell me that's crap but I'll just blame it on the Chardonnay!! Hahaha

[Zee_Bukhari]

I got my backup phone on BT and would highly recommend it

[victorslot]

Moved 2 phones and iPad from EE, no difference apart from the fact it's cheaper with more data. The downsides are tethering and a 12 month contract but I can live with that for the savings.

[tdenson]

Quote:

Originally Posted by victorslot

Moved 2 phones and iPad from EE, no difference apart from the fact it's cheaper with more data. The downsides are tethering and a 12 month contract but I can live with that for the savings.

Is there no tethering allowed at all ?

[corf]

Not in their t&c's and I've read they block it on iPhones. Also their usage counter doesn't work properly as Friend has reached his cap and is blocked from calling but the counter shows 10 mins left.

[mrMick]

Been on BT Mobile a couple of weeks now after finally getting fed up with vodafone's lack of 3G. So far so good. I'm on the top package (unlimited calls and texts, 20GB data), so a big step up for me

[Zee_Bukhari]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdenson

Is there no tethering allowed at all ?

No tethering officially allowed but tether fine using my Nokia Lumia 930.

Theres also an app if you use Android which is called Tether give it a go.

[tdenson]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DevonBloke

This is a popular misconception but it untrue.
Just because the speed is 60meg instead of 30meg doesn't mean you will do anything differently so you will use exactly the same amount of data regardless of speed.

I quite agree. It was just a flippant comment to say I would use it up faster. I really don't know what all this fuss about 4G is about. I do a lot of work in Kenya and am involved in a network which gets capped at 0.5 Mbits if we use the quota early. To tell the truth, for ordinary things such as surfing and email I barely notice the difference even at that slow speed.

[DevonBloke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdenson

I quite agree. It was just a flippant comment to say I would use it up faster. I really don't know what all this fuss about 4G is about. I do a lot of work in Kenya and am involved in a network which gets capped at 0.5 Mbits if we use the quota early. To tell the truth, for ordinary things such as surfing and email I barely notice the difference even at that slow speed.

Agreed but the super speeds as I said will come into play once most people are on 4G and we all start watching TV over it.
It won't benefit any one person but will mean that many users all get a reasonable speed all the time.

Also of course once full rollout is achieved we should have near 90% geographic coverage, HD Vo4G and full bi-directional call hand-off between WiFi calling and 4G.
They only bang on about the speed at the moment because that's the only advantage 4G has.

When we have a whole raft of other services running over 4G that aren't possible on earlier technologies, I'm pretty certain no one will be taking about single speed this and double speed that!

[Carl_Boys]

My fiancée had just moved over to BT, obv more 4g than my Three sim but times when she's on GPRS only where as I've got 3G still plus 20gb plan is too limiting for me. Speeds on 4g are usually 30mbs so can def see the EE network rollout of 4G is a lot quicker ha

[Chris1973]

Quote:

Agreed but the super speeds as I said will come into play once most people are on 4G and we all start watching TV over it.

On 500mb / 1GB / 2GB / 3GB / 5GB packages? - they won't be watching much, at least not on EE!

To be fair to 3G, I don't have ADSL and until very recently no 4G in the rural area where I live, but i've never had any issue with watching video streams on 3G during the last few years. I'm lucky that, despite being in an area of high mobile broadband usage I still get good (10mbps - 12 mbps) 3G speeds day and night, however some people have reported poor speeds even on 4G, so even its arrival may leave disappointment in some places,

I can now access 4G from EE, but given the option, I would much rather have 20GB of 3G than 1GB - 5GB of 4G as I can do more with 20GB of allowance than I can do with 1GB or 5GB of 4G speed.

[The Sack]

I'd be happy at a 5Mbit connection everywhere to be honest rather than an up and down here, there and everywhere service to be honest.

[jaffboy151]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DevonBloke

This is a popular misconception but it untrue.
Just because the speed is 60meg instead of 30meg doesn't mean you will do anything differently so you will use exactly the same amount of data regardless of speed.

Lightspeed is correct, nobody needs more than 30 meg at the moment since allowances don't allow for general land-line broadband replacement.
I'm a speed freak and total techie nerd so I don't need it, I WANT it!! Very sad!!

Where headline speeds are important is in general cell capacity. The faster the speeds the more people can connect and get things done quicker.
Internet use is generally bursty. A 5Mhz LTE cell can handle 200 simultaneous active users (actually transferring data) as full speed. There can be a lot more inactive users. The quicker the data packets can be delivered to each active handset, the more total (active and inactive) users the cell can handle without everything grinding to a halt.
10Mhz can do 400 users and 20Mhz 800 users, all at full speed..ish..

So in theory a 20Mgz EE cell (one sector on a three sectored mast) running at full speed (double) can accommodate a lot more active and inactive users than the same 20Mhz BT cell running at single speed.
Of course all these EE and BT users will be on the same cell so it's a way that EE can prioritise it's own users.

Jabba or Lucan will come along now and tell me that's crap but I'll just blame it on the Chardonnay!! Hahaha

OK Devon, here's one to work out for me. Was getting speeds of 15mbps upload but only 0.4mbps download on three yesterday afternoon, given top speed on this mast can be 65-70mbps (max seen by me is 68mbps) how many active users would you say this mast sector was dealing with?

[tdenson]

Going back to my OP, a BT man told me on the phone when I asked if they do a family plan, no, but you can have five SIMs on the same plan. I find this difficult to believe

[lightspeed2398]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdenson

Going back to my OP, a BT man told me on the phone when I asked if they do a family plan, no, but you can have five SIMs on the same plan. I find this difficult to believe

The website says 5 plans per account. The data wouldn't be shared though.

[tdenson]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lightspeed2398

The website says 5 plans per account. The data wouldn't be shared though.

What does that mean

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdenson

What does that mean

I presume a customer can have 5 lines (probably subject to credit status).

[-GONZO-]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdenson

What does that mean

It means you can have a maximum of 5 sims (5 separate tariffs) per household.

[Gigabit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by -GONZO-

It means you can have a maximum of 5 sims per household.

5.
Lines.

[victorslot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdenson

Going back to my OP, a BT man told me on the phone when I asked if they do a family plan, no, but you can have five SIMs on the same plan. I find this difficult to believe

It means that you can have 5 separate Sims, each one has its own number and and its own allowances but all can be on the same BT account. The allowances are not shared and the billing is added to the BT account holders main account.

[-GONZO-]

Quote:

Originally Posted by victorslot

It means that you can have 5 separate Sims, each one has its own number and and its own allowances but all can be on the same BT account. The allowances are not shared and the billing is added to the BT account holders main account.

'BIB' only if you select the account holder option.
When you apply for the sim and you select the none account holder option it only asks for the phone number and postcode to check your in a BT Broadband household, everything else you setup as an individual person including Direct Debit details.

[binary]

Quote:

Originally Posted by -GONZO-

'BIB' only if you select the account holder option.
When you apply for the sim and you select the none account holder option it only asks for the phone number and postcode to check your in a BT Broadband household, everything else you setup as an individual person including Direct Debit details.

What's 'BIB'?

But yeah, as you say it's possible to have a completely separate BT Mobile account with the £5 discount, just so long as the account holder lives in a household which has a BT Broadband connection.

One of the issues I think with the quad-play concept is the idea of there being one big monthly bill which could cover many if not all the inhabitants of a household. This approach by BT avoids that.