switching to three

[MidgeY2K]

My EE contract (5G broadband) is about to run out on 16th December 2023.

The monthly charge has gone up to £57 a month, with a Fair usage policy of 1TB.

Before I change to Three, which is £20 a month, with no limit, can anyone give me a good reason why not?

Cheers

Jim

[bristolian]

3 & EE are two different networks with very different strategies, in many areas their 4G coverage overlaps but this is not true everywhere.

Make sure that their coverage & service meets your requirements in all the areas you'll want to use your phone - this is true of any change of networks. It's far easier to identify coverage issues before moving, than after.

[Northerner]

No, unless money is no option to you then why wouldn't you want to save money. 

Thanks 

[MidgeY2K]

Thanks, but I am referring to 5G broadband, using a router, and potentially an aerial. 

[Leanne_T]

Hi @MidgeY2K 

Thanks for coming to the community. 

To discuss your options and see what is available with us, please call our mobile guides on 0800 956 6000 and they will get this looked into for you.

Leanne.

[uStoleMyCredit]

I tried a SMARTY unlimited monthly SIM  £20 (THREE network but cheaper) in a 4G dongle and got up to 70Mbps in the small hours but during peak hours the speed was awful due to congestion. I'm now trying a Lyca £10pm offer for 3 months (so called unlimited SIM but 450GB fair use in the small print..) on EE's network and the speeds better but I'm still having the occasional issue in the evenings due to congestion (so bad I switched to 3G a couple of times).

I'm on the edge of 5G when I check the coverage maps but get excellent 4G coverage (5 bars -83dBm) so I wanted to try 4G before committing to a long contract or spending a fortune on a 5G router of my own and the congestion issues have put me off. It seems to be pot luck I've read of people getting 800Mbps on Three's 5G network and others complaining it slows down during peak hours so they've cancelled. Which ever service you pick I'd suggest signing up for a month to test it before taking on an 18 month contract to get the lower price, THREE also recently had a national outage. 

I wouldn't pay anywhere near £57 a month for mobile broadband on an 12/18 month contract, anything over £30 and I'd just pay a little more for a 500Mbps+ FTTP connection which will give a much more reliable connection, consistent speeds and lower pings.

EE prices are awful I have an old PAYG phone that was with Orange, since EE took over they have put the price up to 40p a minute / 40p a txt. For some reason I discovered I was blocked from adding a call/txt  bundle this was when I was in A&E with an extremely ill relative and fielding messages until my credit ran out. I can't even see the bundles / add on’s when I log into MyEE because I only have a few pounds credit, it's absurd that you can't see the add on prices without first adding more credit. I believe EE  wants to force all of its PAYG customers to either leave or sign up for a contract so I'll be leaving soon, they should never have been allowed to take over Orange their business practices are a disgrace.

[stargazerforest]

I have a mobile on EE and a mobile on three both sim only contracts. EE is expensive in comparison to three when you're looking at the usage police. there is a hidden fair usage policy (can't remember what it is) on Three but you can get a lot of data. I use it to upload photos (and I take a lot) surf the web, play games and more and never hit their limits unless I was abroad (as these are lower than in country)

The coverage is the biggest thing you need to check. Three's network around where I live has become a bit unstable since their merger with Vodafone. I also find that as I have to use my mobiles for work, if I know the issue is "carrier" based I find that Three's service to check their own service can be a little lacking. they're perfectly happy to troubleshoot your device with you but when someone like me who works in telephony and can pull traces etc calls up they really can't seem to understand it when I tell them they need to check their network. They just start troubleshooting the phone (which it isn't and I can prove in many ways when it happens.)

However since moving to EE I've not needed to contact their customer service for the same thing as it's my backup service so I have nothing to compare to. So i can't tell you how it compares. I think over time I've had different phones on different providers and I've generally stuck with Three as they've made me the happiest overall. but the signal is the biggest thing.

I find that if I went down the road 30 minutes Three's signal disappears completely. EE take over at that point and have some (very little but more than three)

so I would say check the signal for where you're living on the signal map. I have found that in areas where Three are not, EE quite often are. So you need to take this into the most consideration. No point paying for a service you can't use at all if they haven't got much signal around there. And anything that says 3G service for Three ignore it.... they're switching that off. 

[bristolian]

Some valid observations, even if the thread you'd added to is from 2023!

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@stargazerforest wrote:

so I would say check the signal for where you're living on the signal map.

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I'd go even further and say don't rely on coverage maps alone. They're a good tool, but don't measure capacity or data speeds, and thus there is no substitute for a real-world test with PAYG SIMs.

There's a common viewpoint that all networks are "the same", and for some users it may be true. Your experience is another example of where some networks do perform better than others.