Mobile Network Comparison

It’s now been a couple of weeks since Giffgaff implemented their latest pricing changes so it’s time to reflect back on what have been the biggest alteration to their goodybag offerings for several years.

It had been quite a while since the last big price increase and, since they market themselves as “the mobile network run by you”, Giffgaff were very careful to at least make the pretence of allowing their users to have a significant say in the changes. However, it was clear that no matter what the consensus was, something was going to have to give as the unlimited data offerings were economically unviable especially with 4G on the horizon and more and more people owning 3G handsets.

For months there had been issues with people “abusing” unlimited data goodybags for cheap prices which was costing the network a lot of money and adversely affecting other users both on Giffgaff and their parent network, O₂. Tethering and detecting it was also a confounding factor. As a result, Giffgaff needed to reprice goodybags and began a user consultation on 6 August 2014. They’d previously been discussing similar issues in the community for several months.

After listening to member feelings, they offered three options. All removed truly unlimited data for every goodybag except for the £20 one. The main difference between all the choices was the amount of included data available which was ratcheted down with a corresonding increase in free minutes included.

Unsurprisingly, the community voted very strongly in favour of the highest data allowances on offer and much of the discussion was vehemently against any removal of the unlimited data option on the £12 goodybag. As one customer put it:

I for one will not be casting my vote for option 1, 2 or 3! This is a load of crap! The main appeal for me in leaving my old network and signing up to giffgaff was to receive unlimited data usage at a reasonable price. That’s how you batted the hook and reeled a lot of people in. And now your moving the goal posts and that sucks! You tell us to modify our usage habits to improve the experience for everyone. We do this and what reward do we get? A thank you email and a proposed price hike! Thanks giffgaff! Thanks a lot!

Nevertheless, unsurprisingly the changes were steamrollered in. As of 24 September 2014, the goodybag changes were live on the site and the old goodybag were no longer available for purchase. Of course, Giffgaff is still one of the best value options available but that’s small consolation for those who now are paying about £3 more every month.

Thankfully, following the initial consultation Giffgaff took on board more feedback to make the changes not quite as harsh. But the net result was that the following new goodybag range was implemented.

Stay tuned for another post detailing exactly what has changed. And in the meantime, please let us know your thoughts and opinions on this matter in the comments below. Thanks for reading 🙂

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As one if the biggest UK communities for virtual networks, we get a lot of discussion of the latest offerings and tariffs in our comments sections. In fact, our lovely readers have left over 3000 comments over the last few years and we’re always happy to hear people’s opinions and experiences whether they are good or bad.

However, it’s our responsibility to provide a fair and impartial platform for discussing mobile networks. And nowadays, corporations are coming up with cunning and conniving ways to manipulate consumers. One of these is astroturfing which can aim to alter public viewpoints by pretending to be an impartial customer rather than a paid employeed. According to Wikipedia, it’s “a practice intended to give the statements or organizations more credibility by withholding information about the source’s financial connection”.

As a result, we try to keep an eye out for people attacking competitors or praising their own companies under the guise of an anonymous member of the public and without disclosing that they’re working on behalf of a corporate political sponsor. We’ve already managed to publish a detailed exposé of Vectone Mobile who used pseudonyms to promote their own services.

In that case, we managed to track down the comments to their Head of Online Marketing. We even cross-referenced the email address the comments came from with IP addresses used to promote Delight Mobile, a sister company of Vectone. Armed with this conclusive proof, we were able to reveal that this was a common practice at Vectone.

So of course, when we receive glowingly-sycophantic comments, we take a careful look to check nothing is awry. Recently, someone calling themselves “Cameron” left a comment about Now Mobile saying, “You ALL need to check Now PAYG out, their tariffs are so good. They are so transparent too!”

This already seemed a bit unnatural and contrived to us. And then they went on to say “No fair use policy at all – this month so far (they won’t be impressed with this)”.

Our BS-detector was now beeping like crazy so we dug into the website logs:

What’s that, the comment was left by wasim.akhtar@nowpayg.co.uk? Isn’t that a domain that’s similar to Now Mobile? We decided to visit nowpayg.co.uk – what do you know, it’s the Now Mobile website! But that’s not evidence in itself – it’s very easy to leave a fake email address to mislead people.

What about this name, Wasim Akhtar? Why is that the name of the email address yet the user chose to have the comment appear under the name “Cameron”? What reason would someone have for wanting to conceal their name when writing a positive comment about a company? Well, let’s look a bit more at who this Wasim Akhtar could be. A simple Google search brought up the following:

Well, what do you know. It seems someone called Wasim Akhtar works for “Now Mobile Telecommunications Ltd”. And he’s Head of Retail. What else can we find?

So Wasim has been working there for some years now… But this still isn’t enough. Someone could have done all this research themselves and used his name in a type of reserve astroturfing to make Wasim and Now Mobile look bad.

Is there any way we can find out for sure? Well, for a start, the webserver logs give an IP address for the person who left the comment. Let’s see what we can dig up with that.

A simple command can query the WHOIS database for the IP address 194.72.102.146. This is the output we got.

mnc@umami:~$ whois -c GB 194.72.102.146

% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf

% Note: this output has been filtered.
%       To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.

% Information related to '194.72.102.144 - 194.72.102.159'

% Abuse contact for '194.72.102.144 - 194.72.102.159' is 'abuse@bt.com'

inetnum:        194.72.102.144 - 194.72.102.159
netname:        NOWTEL
descr:          FTIP003263549 Nowtel Management Limited
country:        GB
admin-c:        MK12425-RIPE
tech-c:         MK12425-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         BTNET-MNT
mnt-lower:      BTNET-MNT
mnt-routes:     BTNET-MNT
remarks:        Please send abuse notification to abuse@bt.net
remarks:        Please send delisting issues to btnetdns@bt.net
source:         RIPE # Filtered

How very interesting! Seems that the comment was left from a computer owned by Nowtel Management Limited? But who is this Nowtel? Well, it’s a company based in London. And it turns out it’s the parent company of Now Mobile. Nowtel launched Now Mobile in July 2010.

Oh dear, Wasim: Busted!

Astroturfing is bad enough as it conceals your true intentions and aims to mislead and manipulate your customers. At no point in his comment did Wasim reveal his real name publicly nor disclose that he works for the company he was recommending. In fact, he actually did the opposite – by writing “hey won’t be impressed with this” he’s trying to give the impression that he’s in no way affiliated with Now Mobile.

We looked into Nowtel a bit more and found that one of their Core Values is “Be Transparent”. They also proudly claim that “Honesty, integrity and openness is at the heart of our business”:

What’s your take, readers? Is it “transparent” for Now Mobile employees to pose under different names and publish comments praising their own company while simultaneously pretending to be completely unrelated? Is there any instance when it’s not appropriate to fully disclose their employers? And what do you think about Now Mobile now you’ve read about this?

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Goodbye roaming charges? Following our recent story about the EU’s latest cut in roaming charges, there’s even more good news on the horizon for consumers travelling with their phones. Earlier this year, the European Parliament voted to completely abolish roaming charges throughout the EU. The measures will come into force on 15 December 2015.

The EU has been standing up against greedy mobile networks for several years now. It’s already brought in legislation over the last few years that have slashed costs for holiday-makers and businesspeople using their phones abroad.

The existing bill has already guaranteed 90% discounts on wholesale pricing of data and have seen call charges fall by about 50% for calls and texts.

Operators will no longer be able to charge extra when people use their phones in any of the EU’s twenty eight member states. This includes not only calls and texts but also mobile internet usage.

The new legislation states that customers will be given “the confidence to stay connected when they travel in the Union without being subject to additional charges over and above the tariffs which they pay in the Member State where their contract was concluded”.

However, mobile networks are up in arms about the changes as it means they’ll no longer be able to make obscene profit margins on travelling consumers. Excessive roaming charges have been an easy source of income for international communications conglomerates and, as people travel more and with the rise of data-hungry smartphones, they’ve been revelling in the easy money roaming fees allow them.

According to research conducted by the European Commission, UK mobile users paid over £100 million in roaming charges in 2013. This is despite the fact that the true costs are a tiny fraction of this and that most people turn off roaming to avoid being hit by huge fees.

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for digital affairs said:

“This vote is the EU delivering for citizens. This is what the EU is all about – getting rid of barriers to make life easier and less expensive. We should know what we are buying, we should not be ripped off, and we should have the opportunity to change our mind.”

However, the networks are already fighting back. Even the legislation is designed to open up greater economies of scale though industry consolidation and the prediction that they might only lose a tiny percentage of their revenues, a coalition of networks rhas warned that the cost of domestic calls could rise to pay for it.

Not content with years of easy money, operators and virtual networks including Three, Virgin Media, France’s Free and Italy’s FastWeb and CoopItalia have made threats of blackmail claiming that since this new bill bans one of their most profitable business practices, they could respond by sabotaging the roll out of 4G services.

The roaming coalition is hoping for an amendment before the bill passes its final hurdle this autumn, when it goes before the council of EU ministers.

What do you think? Are roaming charges still too high even after the EU’s price-capping intervention? Do you think it’s a good thing that they are being abolished altogether? And is it fair for networks to charge consumers more if they get cut off from this revenue stream? Let us know what you think!

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