Is 500MB enough mobile data for 4G?

I don’t understand EE’s pricing. I’m on a business tariff, and I currently pay £7.50+VAT per month for 800MB, 325 minutes, 150 texts and unlimited calls to other Orange numbers. For a 4G consumer tariff with 1GB of data, EE are charging £26/month, but the equivalent business tariff is £35+VAT per month, i.e. 62% more than the consumer tariff. I’ll definitely be staying away from EE; their charges are outrageous.

I was waiting to use a 4g phone and connection, and I was expecting a premium but I was also expecting an overhaul of the data allowances. I have no problem with spending £35-£45 per month for 4g. but the only reason I would want 4g is to game over it using my vita and the view high def video content online. Which immediately make me more worried about gb than mb.the fact they even have a 500mb package at 4g speeds I find almost laughable. I will ring them when this is released and try and see if they see any sense, otherwise my next contract is going to be with 3, with all you can eat data. Then wait 2 years and get 4g when it is stable and hopefully less ludicrously priced. As an indication I use ~1.5gb and that is just browsing the internet and watching the odd low quality youtube video. At 4g speeds 3gb should be the entry point! and at £66per month I would expect unlimited!

EE is a 4G provider, Orange is 3G provider. Its like comparing a mini to a Rolls Royce. Its unlikely EE, who own Orange brand, will upgrade it in the near future.

I work for EE but this is my personal view : I know that senior management (board level) are evaluating the feedback being posted all over the internet and will react to it appropriately. We are breaking new ground here, give us one month of live service and then see how things have evolved. There is a genuine desire to provide the best services and the best network but at the same time we do have to make a profit to stay in business.

I wonder if the new 4G phone contracts will be fixed price contracts or if the payments may rise during the contract period. It’s worth checking before buying your shiny new toy.

There is a big misunderstanding here about 4G in the UK! Who on earth has made this mountain from a molehill saying that 4G speeds are going to eat up all your data in a few minutes? Is anyone on these forums actually computer or internet savvy? When you download anything via 3G or 4G, we are talking megaBITS per second, NOT megaBYTES! if you have a monthly data cap of 500 megabytes (size) per month then your 4G is not going to eat it up any faster. you still have a total of 500 megabytes (size) to consume. The difference is that over 4G you wont have to wait for pages to load because the data transfer speeds are quicker. up to 50 megabits per second instead of the 3G 7 or 12 megaBITS per second.

Come on guys! get learning about internet speeds and downloads before making the whole country wobble with fear because we are being told silly stories by amateur reviewers!

What are people’s real world experience with this service?

I regularly do speed tests on my BT infinity landline and get measured speeds of around 70Mb/s, so one would think that things like email would just happen so quickly you simply could not see it happening, or that I could watch live HD TV on my 24″ monitor without buffering, but the reality is I monitor my down load speeds continuously and rarely see more than 10Mb/s and that is with a fixed landline.

My guess would be that the sorts of speeds over a mobile network that EE are promising is just so much hot air just as fixed line companies have advertised speeds of “up to X Mb/s” and we all know that it has been a con for the last 10 years or more. Now I’m sure that in certain parts of big cities at certain times of the day these speeds will be there, but for everyday use, no chance.

Once everybody swops to 4G all the other issues of contention ratios, bandwidth, not to mention the speed of the servers at the sites you are visiting will slow the whole thing down dramatically. Remember that promise that came with 3G “you will never hear all lines are busy”? happens to me more often than I would expect.

I struggle with 3g a lot of the time outside of towns and cities, if 4G uses higher transmission frequencies then that will only exacerbate that problem as the higher the frequency the less able it is to penetrate buildings etc so it will become even more “line of sight” than it is now.

For 4G to be truly ubiquitous it will need an absolutely massive investment in infrastructure, even 3G coverage is not that good, so please let’s have a little more honesty with the 4G than we’ve had with either 3G or fixed lines! Only when the coverage is more or less universal will data limits become really relevant, at the moment I have 2Gb on Orange and although I would like to use it all, most of the time it’s so slow I just give up and find some other way to get the information I want

my ee bill is supposed to be 25 pounds a month and is not 38. i have unlimited texts and calls, it says *internet on your phone – what does this mean?
and what does detailled billig show like does it show the exact apps you used or?

This is the letter I plan on sending to EE (shows my stance on the matter):

I am writing to you again to tell you how of how appalled I am with the product and services that you offer.

I have recently purchased the Apple iPhone 5 and switched networks from Vodafone to Everything Everywhere. I was happy to join Everything Everywhere because of your temporary exclusive rights to the 4G network, however I have been infuriated and deeply disappointed with the product and services that you have offered thus far and am seriously considering cancelling my contract. I purchased the Apple iPhone 5, 32gb on a ‘Pay Monthly’ plan with unlimited minutes and texts (which is unnecessary for most customers) as well as 1gb of data allowance. After just 2 and a half weeks into my new phone contract I received a text message which stated that my data allowance limit had been reached. I pay £41 per month, so that I can use all of the features on this handset and the fact that such an extortionate monthly price plan should consist of features such as 1gb of data allowance which lasts for 2 and a half weeks is an absolute farce. I previously owned the iPhone 4 and I did not exceed my data allowance in 2 years and the fact that I am using this handset in exactly the same manner as my iPhone 4 and have now reached my data allowance limit is infuriating, as I purchased the contract on the premise that EE offers 4G ‘super-fast’ internet, however due to the ridiculous data allowance offered, I no longer use 4G and my handset is currently an ‘expensive iPhone 4.’

I went to the EE store in Vicarage Fields, Barking and found the staff very unhelpful. The staff told me that I could pay an extra £5 per month for an extra 1gb of data allowance which is a disgrace as £46 per month is extortionate. I honestly do not understand how you can offer a 4G handset with 1gb of data allowance when 4G loads data faster and is inevitably going to eat up lots more data. However, I was not informed of this at the point of sale, in fact, the sales adviser told me I had the option of either a 500mb or 1gb of data allowance. I was not given an option for more data or to negotiate a more reasonable price because I am fully aware that these price plans are not ‘fixed prices’ or ‘set in stone,’ as I know of other customers which a much more attractive deal.

I am deeply upset with the service offered by Everything Everywhere and rue my decision to have joined your network. If I had the opportunity to rescind the contract I would but unfortunately I will have to wait another 24 months before I can switch back to Vodafone. I expect a swift resolution to the matter.

As far as I’m concerned all this talk about superfast 4G is entirely academic. Where I live (in the middle of Somerset and definitely not ‘out in the sticks’ we have no decent 3G coverage, and when I am travelling around 2G is extremely patchy. Heaven knows how long I’ll have to wait for 4G, and one thing is certain – now the operators have got a ‘new toy in their box’ they won’t worry about extending 3G and 2G coverage into the not-spots.

I was glad to see that in the latest allocations the Government included an obligation to get as wide coverage as possible as quickly as possible – but I’m not holding my breath! In an ideal world the operators should have been prohibited from providing the service inside the M25 until they had got at lease, say, 75% coverage elsewhere!