Giving up on phone contracts
By @edent
· covid19 mobile phone · 2 comments · 350 words · read ~346 times.
Another weird economic casualty of COVID19. I'm not wearing out my socks and shoes. I cancelled my train season ticket. And now, I'm giving up my mobile contract.
For a decade, I worked in the mobile industry - and always had an unlimited SIM card. Rejoining the real world, some years ago, was a bit of a shock to the system. You mean people have to pay for phone calls?!?
The pandemic has everyone reassessing their finances, right? Do I need that beer-of-the-month subscription? Should I move to a lower cost brand of cornflakes? Can I get rid of my mobile bill entirely?
I pay a hefty amount for 300Mbps broadband at home and, for the last few hundred days, I've not really walked further away than my WiFi signal can reach.
All my friends and family are on Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and some cool app you've not heard of yet.
Work calls are all Meet, Zoom, and Skype (Remember Skype?!).
Most customer service call centres are desperate for users to move to online channels of support. And I don't fancy spending half my day on hold to crappy Muzzak.
So I cancelled my phone contract and went to PAYG on GiffGaff.
This is my usage for the last month.
Fun fact! One of those text messages was me accidentally replying to a 2FA code.
No, thank you Android!!!!
It turns out, I don't need to make a whole lot of telephone calls on my telephone.
So, I have a fiver of PAYG credit which is very slowly leaching away. When life returns to normal (when????) I wonder if I'll revert back to paying a tonne of money for data? All my usual haunts have decent WiFi, and I can always pony up for a few GB if I'm desperate.
Anyway, you can get £5 extra credit when you switch to GiffGaff using my link http://www.giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/edent.
The State of SIP
Data is so cheap it is being given away
How much money I've spent on mobile calls / text / data in the last year
Marcus Downing says:
The cheaper monthly options on Giffgaff have been enough for me for years. Currently on £6/month, and even that may be more data than I need using during lockdown.
Networks like to bundle the cost of a phone with the contract, which is why they cost so much.
I’ve been on SIM-only rolling contracts for the last few years, currently with iD Mobile — ironically, they use Three for their network, the provider I left to get a better deal. I currently pay £5 a month, but now I’m wondering if PAYG might work out cheaper for me considering my low usage.