Mobile Network Comparison

Justin King, the outspoken boss of British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has come under fire after launching his new mobile network in partnership with Vodafone.

Only a few days ago, we reported on the new mobile network being launched under the brand Mobile By Sainsbury’s. Justin King, who is the chief executive of the supermarket, has consistently challenged business leaders regarding their aggressive tax arrangements and has even gone as far to say that the issue is simply one of morality.

At the British Retail Consortium symposium just a few weeks previously, he made a speech asserting that businesses should stand behind their tax arrangements and that they have an ethical obligation to pay a fair amount back to the state. Mr King he even warned other businesses that they might face consumer boycotts if they can continue to use tax avoidance schemes.

Some quotations from Justin King include the following:

By the last count we were the 12th biggest taxpayer in the UK and we are proud of our taxpaying record.

If companies believe what they do is moral, they should be very happy to lay bare what they are doing, and open it to consumer scrutiny, and we are quite happy to do that, not just on the issue of tax.

However, recently his words have been called into question and accusations of hypocrisy have been flying in from left, right and centre. The principal reason for this is that Vodafone have long been lambasted for their aggressive tax avoidance measures.

Tax campaigners have pointed out the contradiction between his claims about tax being a moral issue and his business relationship with Vodafone which is a company well known to be a prolific tax avoider. Despite taking in over £40 billion in revenue, Vodafone haven’t paid any tax at all in the last financial year. Nor did they pay any the year before that.

Meanwhile, the Vodafone CEO has a paycheque of over £10 million and shareholders received almost £5 billion in dividends over the last 12 months. Vodafone were publicly accused in Parliament of paying just over a sixth of the tax bill owed to HMRC.

The whole time Vodafone have been vigorously defending their tax records and in fact published a lengthy document making it clear that they would only go as far as necessary to just meet their legal requirements and certainly would not consider issue of morality regarding their tax avoidance schemes.

It’s hard to see how Sainsbury’s can justify this business relationship even if the other mobile networks may be just as bad as Vodafone. Tax avoidance campaigners have called on Sainsbury’s to reconsider this partnership in light of what is known about Vodafone’s tax arrangements. And it will certainly be a significant blemish to Sainsbury’s reputation as a company that pays more tax than other organisations with a similar amount of profit.

This news comes only a few weeks after the revelation that Sainsbury’s has several overseas subsidiaries including ones based well-known tax havens such as Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands. The Fair Tax Mark – a civil society campaign concerned with promoting transparency and fairness in the tax affairs of companies – also showed that they had a shortfall in the amount of tax actually paid.

In response, Justin King has defended the Vodafone deal by describing Vodafone as a “first-class” operator and the “perfect” choice for his supermarket. However he’s refused to be drawn into a direct comment on Vodafone’s tax affairs or whether the moral obligation to businesses and their tax liabilities extend to other organisations they have business partnerships with.

What is your take on Mobile By Sainsbury’s working with Vodafone? Are they being hypocritical with this business relationship? Or has Justin King got a lot to answer for by dealing with these tax avoiders?

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Sainsbury’s has finally joined the UK’s other major supermarkets in offering a mobile provider service. It had to happen eventually. We’d been expecting it would be just round the corner every year but it never was. Until now. Bowing to the inevitable, and just a tad tardy, Sainsbury’s has joined the party. Introducing … Mobile By Sainsbury’s.

Tesco Mobile was the big pioneer starting out way back in 2003. And after that, ASDA Mobile was launched in April 2007 and revolutionised the virtual network market with industry leading rates. In fact, they were the first truly budget mobile network as previously even virtual mobile networks were barely much cheaper than standard high street PAYG tariff offerings. And now, just ten years behind Tesco and with a bit of a mouthful for a brand name, Sainsbury’s has stuck its oar in.

The rates are pretty competitive especially compared to Tesco Mobile and ASDA Mobile. The basic PAYG plan is just 8p/minute for calls and 4p each for texts. Unfortunately data is pretty expensive unless you are a very low user coming in at 50p per day up to a maximum of just 25MB. If you need to check your emails every weekday, it will set you back about a tenner a month just on data. And that won’t even give you enough allowance to download apps and music or stream video.

However, there are some 30-day rolling bundles on offer. Just like SIM-only contracts or bundles offered by other virtual networks, these give you an allowance and can be changed every 30 days. They all come with unlimited texts (subject to a fair use policy) and the cheapest is £10 and provides 200 minutes as well as 250MB of mobile data. If you spend £15 you’ll get 300 minutes as well as 500MB data. And finally, £20 will get you a more hefty 800 minutes as well as 1GB of internet usage.

While these are decent value, you can certainly get much better deals if you’re willing to look elsewhere. So what else has Sainsbury’s got up its sleeve to persuade you to switch over?

It seems that the service is aimed people in their 30s and 40s, particularly mums and families who need to keep in touch with their kids but maybe don’t have enough time to be glued to internet apps and games on their phones. If you just need to make infrequent calls and texts, it’s good value. And even better, there are lots of Nectar points bonuses available for Mobile By Sainsbury’s users.

First of all, all top-ups quality for double Nectar points effectively meaning you get 2% back every time you add credit to your phone. And if you are using one of the 30-day bundles, you also get double Nectar points on Sainsbury’s shopping and fuel station purchases. While this certainly won’t make you rich, many people will definitely appreciate the extra pennies at the end of each month. Be aware, Mobile By Sainsbury’s customers have to opt-in to this scheme and link their Nectar card number by texting it to 40774.

Sainsbury’s previously only used to offer basic mobile accessories like USB cables but they’ve now started cross-marketing into mobile handsets too. They are mainly targeting the aforementioned mums here as well with budget phones ranging from just over a tenner up to a bit more than £100. Unfortunately the prices aren’t so good that it’s worth buying a locked handset and you can get much better deals buying SIM-free phones online. For example, not only is the Nokia Lumia 520 cheaper on Amazon but it also comes unlocked to any network and with free delivery.

It’s still early days but it’s a little concerning that the Mobile By Sainsbury’s website seems a little under construction still even though it’s fully launched. For example, take a look at the FAQ page – many answers are simply incomplete and just plain useless at present. Hopefully this will get sorted soon.

Mobile By Sainsbury’s have chosen to use Vodafone as their partner network. This is the same choice as ASDA Mobile made so coverage should be exactly the same on both providers. They also offer BlackBerry plans for an additional subscription of £5 every 30 days. Stay tuned for our full review coming soon…

What do you make of this move by Sainsbury’s? Why do you think it took them so long to launch their own network? Are they plans cheap enough to persuade you to change over? And will they be as successful as Tesco and ASDA?

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At long last, O₂ has announced its 4G LTE service for United Kingdom. The confirmed date that it will launch and the service will go live on 29 August 2013. The official announcement won’t take place until tomorrow, but this date is fixed already.

The whole country has collectively breathed a sigh of relief with this news, as this will finally see an end to EE’s monopoly on super high-speed 4G in the UK. Until now, super network EE which was made up of the merger between Orange and T-Mobile, has been given the opportunity to be the sole provider of 4G by Ofcom following the farcical spectrum auction fiasco.

EE’s 4G LTE service went live on 30 October 2012 so they would have had just over a year’s head start with this lucrative monopoly. Almost immediately, they cranked up prices and came under consistent criticism for price gouging. Hopefully, as their competitors are able to enter the market, will see a better deal for consumers wanting to take advantage of 4G mobile Internet.

Industry insiders have hinted as to how the rollout will progress next month. Initially the first part will see London and either Bradford or Leeds in the North of England receive their 4G capability before anywhere else. By the end of 2013, it is said that an additional ten more regions will have their the fast mobile Internet turned on.

O₂ have stated that the initial launch will see around 5 million of the UK population covered by their 4G service with this amount increasing by an average of 8 million every month. The next ten cities that will be added are going to be Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Manchester and Edinburgh. O₂ have also made the bold statement that they will smash the deadline set by Ofcom and have 98% of the UK population covered with their 4G service before the beginning of 2016.

We do have a few hints about the pricing structure, however. It has been revealed that O₂‘s SIM-only tariffs on 4G will come in at £26 per month. There will also be a special deal for customers wishing to switch over whereby O₂ are offering a 30 day guarantee allowing them to revert to their previous tariff if they are not content with their 4G service. Unfortunately, today we don’t have any more details about the exact pricing plan they’ve gone for.

In comparison, EE’s cheapest rates is currently £21 a month for calls and data. It also already has much broader coverage of 4G across the UK with almost 100 cities currently receiving coverage. Another negative points for O₂ is that it currently won’t be to support the iPhone 5 at the time of launch although we certainly expect that this will be remedied with later versions of the phone.

There are also some concerns about the frequencies that O₂ decided to buy at the recent Ofcom auction. Although they spent over half a billion pounds on mobile spectrum, most of it was in the long-distance 800 MHz band mini they have a bit of a shortfall in the high-capacity, high bandwidth 2.6 GHz band. O₂ already had a reputation for poor 3G speeds so it remains to be seen whether they also lagged behind after 4G has come out.

It’s also not yet clear whether the virtual operators who piggy-back on O₂‘s network will choose to offer 4G services too. Budget providers such as Tesco Mobile and Giffgaff have yet to announce whether they will offer 4G connectivity when it goes live on O₂ nor whether they will introduce new tariffs for this super-fast data service. We’re keenly waiting to hear what the situation will be.

As for the other networks, Three Mobile has said that it won’t charge any extra for its 4G service but that it is going to wait and see what all the other networks make available before launching its offer. It’s thought that this will happen just before the beginning of next year. Vodafone had always claims that their 4G service would be live by the end of the summer but no launch date has yet been announced.

Are you on O₂? Are you looking forward to the 4G launch and we take advantage of it? What you think the price tariff will be compared to EE? Do you think that Tesco Mobile and Giffgaff will go for it from launch? And are you concerned at all about the speeds you’ll be getting? Leave your comments below

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