topic Re: Poor signal over Monthly contract vs. pay as you go sim in Mobile Network discussions

Poor signal over Monthly contract vs. pay as you go sim

matt-miles_32 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:29:00 GMT

I've just got a contract for my 11 year old son - one of the 'my first SIM' deals at £9 a month. I've paired this with a perfectly working old iPhone XR that used to be a work phone.

This was over easter weekend - and something went wrong with the activation, so in order to give a gift that actually worked, I had to purchase a PAYG SIM from the local petrol station.

Once the monthly contract was activated a few days later - we noticed that network coverage was poor - and reinstalled the PAYG SIM as a backup, and to see if there was a difference in mobile signal coverage.

Now, we life in the wilds of Norfolk, so mobile signal is sketchy at the best of times, but it would seem that the Contract SIM is by far the worst in terms of getting a useable signal.

Any thoughts on what I need to do next?

Re: Poor signal over Monthly contract vs. pay as you go sim

Matt_124 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:21:08 GMT

When you say that you noticed the coverage was poor, was this an observation based on calls or data performance?

Were you struggling to make/receive calls or were data speeds slower?

If this was a data speeds concern, the £9 Safer SIM Protected Plan has maximum speeds of 0.5 Mbps whereas a standard PAYG SIM has a 25 Mbps speed cap which may explain your issue.

It is an intentionally 'locked down' plan to ensure only the most essential data usage is allowed such as iMessage/RCS or Maps, but not suitable for anything more intensive than that. Perhaps another plan may have suited your needs better than this.

Re: Poor signal over Monthly contract vs. pay as you go sim

matt-miles_32 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:50:51 GMT

Thanks for responding Matt_124,

The poor coverage is based on calls/signal coverage. ie, if we're primarily giving the phone to our kid to use in emergencies, and to let us know whether they got somewhere safe, Its not use to us if they can't do that under the 9 PCM contract.

I understand the capped data usage - that makes a lot of sense for a 'first phone'

I was wondering if the signal coverage was limited with the monthly plan as opposed to the PAYG setup.

Re: Poor signal over Monthly contract vs. pay as you go sim

bristolian — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:41:14 GMT

There were historic circumstances where a PAYG SIM would be unable to access certain coverage layers, which were more prevalent in rural & remote areas. Those circumstances would only now apply to a phone/SIM combination not set to use VoLTE/4G-calling - if one phone doesn't have VoLTE, and the 800Mhz layer is the only one available, then no-service would be no surprise.

On-screen bars varying between two phones in the same location would be nothing unusual, but this should not extend to a variance between "no service" and "coverage"