Originally Posted by cooler:
“During the last year, EE have been offering free SIMs with 100GB data a month for the equivalent of £5/month. Yet I don't hear people complaining about network performance on EE.”
Yes that's true, but I don't think enough people have these sims or use enough data on them to cause any sort of effect. I'm yet to meet a single person who has heard of these sims (and believe me, I'm always pointing them out to people because of how good of a deal they are). The only people that seem to be using them are people in the know.
The inconvenience of switching sims/numbers is enough for everyday customers not to bother. Many of us have multiple phones and enjoy network stuff so it's a no brainer to grab these sims, I don't think it's that simple for the average Joe. As of now, I've got 2 friends on EE that run out of data quite often but refuse to grab a 200GB sim because they can't be bothered with the hassle.
My guess is that there are people using these sims to tether and use huge amounts of data, but they are spread across the country and there's no one particular area where you will find an abundance of EE 200GB sim users. Unlike Three, where you will find AYCE users congesting sites and people using more than 200GB per month.
Considering Three carry 40% of mobile data with 5 million 4G users and EE have over 14 million 4G users (so 60% of mobile data between EE/O2/Vodafone), I think it's clear to see that these 200GB sims aren't overly popular. If EE customers became as aggressive as Three customers with their data usage, EE might have a problem.
Nevertheless, EE's network performance is very impressive. If EE added 100GB to existing customers accounts, then we would see how the network copes.