Mobile Network Comparison

Since last Thursday, Giffgaff have been paying out millions of pounds back to their members. It’s a process of sharing and mutual returns that they have been doing since they first launched only a few years ago. This time the total paid out was almost £2 million!

Presumably taking a bit of inspiration from employee-owed businesses such as Waitrose and John Lewis, Giffgaff aims to be “the network run by you”. While this is not true in any real legal sense, Giffgaff have always gone to significant efforts to solicit feedback from their users and the Ideas forum is replete with suggestions that will eventually come to light as implemented features.

What’s more, Giffgaff actively seek the involvement of the community in other aspects of running a mobile network. They save money by relying on users as the front-line customer support. And the forums are filled with useful members willing to help out with minor issues such a APN settings or activating a SIM card.

Giffgaff also have relied strongly on word of mouth to promote their services. Much of their new customer base comes from member-to-member referrals and it’s been a very successful model due to the potential for exponential growth. At least in the early days, they didn’t have a big advertising spend and saved a huge amount of marketing money by asking their users to sell for them.

In return for their work on the forums and in promotional activities, Giffgaff rewards helpful users with payback – money that they can choose to receive either as airtime credit, cold hard cash or as a charitable donation. Keeping in theme, Giffgaff allow its members to choose the charities each payback period and match all the contributions with their own donation.

Payback is processed every six months in June and December and, as Giffgaff has grown as a network, the amount of people helping out has grown massively as has the amount of money paid back to the community. We’ve been carefully charting Giffgaff’s paybacksince the first payments went out back in June 2010.

Back then, the total paid out was only £27,000 and it went up steadily until June the next year when they paid out £250,000 (including £6,000 to just one member called uzzyy!) After that, things really took off as Giffgaff rapidly expanded and the payback payouts exploded too quickly reaching over £1 million in June last year. The graph got even steeper as the exponential increases continued until the last payback payment in December 2012 where members received a total of £1,850,000.

That level of growth has not turned out to be sustainable and it was with a bit of a whimper that Giffgaff announced their latest figures this June. However, the total is still going up just not as fast as before.

We do suspect that there’s a bit of disappointment at Giffgaff HQ that they didn’t hit the £2 million mark this time round. And their blog post certainly was careful not to mention that the trend is slowing down.

However, it was never going to be able to maintain that level of growth and we’d certainly say that the amount paid out is nothing less than impressive! If anything it robustly puts into perspective the amount of money that major networks must be wasting on customer service and marketing which makes it clearly why they charge so much more for calls, texts and data than Giffgaff.

We put together the graph at the top of the page to chart the history of Giffgaff’s payback payments so far. What do you think will happen to the trend in the future?

If you’d like to earn a cut of £2 million, you should get involved and sign up to a Giffgaff account. You get £5 free credit to start you off and you will be able to start earning as soon as your activate your SIM card. You don’t even need to use it – just having an active SIM qualifies you to get payback payments!

What do you think about the payback scheme? Are you involved or are you thinking about joining. Will this support and marketing model continue to be successful? And most importantly, can you tell us your prediction for the total paid out next time in December?

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The UK’s second-largest mobile phone network, Vodafone, is still avoiding paying any tax at all in the UK. Despite making revenues of over £40 billion in the last tax year, the operator has avoided paying taxes which fund public services in this country. In fact, Vodafone recording profits of over £3 billion overall and made over £5 billion in revenues from UK customers. However, even though they paid their the tax bills they are legally obliged to in other countries up to a total of over £2.5 billion, not a single penny of tax was remitted to HMRC.

Vodafone join EE (the UK’s biggest mobile operator) in the hall of shame of tax-dodgers. Only last November we reported about how EE’s latest accounts show that it has not paid anything at all in corporation tax in the UK.

Apple is another technology company that has been strongly criticised in recent months over its UK tax arrangements. Political comedian Mark Thomas attended a flashmob protest this week at Apple’s Regent Street flagship store. Apple has been revealed to pay just 0.01% tax on a sales income of $74 billion. That’s roughly just one dollar for every $7400 earned. In contrast, a UK taxpayer earning the median income pays about 19% tax or one pound in every five earned. Apple gets away with this by funnelling its earnings through various subsidiaries in the Republic of Ireland.

This is the second year in a row that Vodafone have paid no tax at all. Their ethical record was already somewhat dubious after supporting now-toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak against mass public protests during the Arab Spring. However, the mobile network will find it hard to defend the fact they aren’t contributing any tax especially when the last 12 months have seen shareholders rubbing their hand following a 13% rise in the stock price and taking home almost £5 billion in dividends.

What Vodafone is doing is technically legal as it is writing off its spendings on 4G upgrades and interest payments which attract huge tax breaks. However, despite them not paying any tax, their CEO Vittorio Colao took home over £10 million last year.

The fact that UK citizens are being ripped off by a massively profitable global conglomerate is particularly important now they are suffering under George Osborne’s austerity measures. Vodafone is effectively being being subsidised by taxpayers via the coalition Government. About 14,000 Vodafone staff work in the UK out of a total workforce of around 90,000. And although Vodafone was let off £6 billion in tax last year and didn’t pay anything again this year, Osborne is slashing the UK’s welfare budget by £4 billion.

What’s your take on this? Should a company as profitable as Vodafone be allowed to pay no tax at all in the UK? How come they have to pay tax in other countries but not here? And what do you think should be done to crackdown on corporate tactics like these?

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Ethical mobile virtual network operator, The People’s Operator, has launched their new pay monthly SIM-only deals. They have a range of 30-day rolling contracts as well as a data plan designed specifically for tablets. Prices range from a super-low monthly rate of £5 all the way up to £25/month.

To celebrate the launch, they are offering a great added incentive to make the switch. For a limited time, members can get triple the calls, five times the data, and unlimited messages from just £10 per month. You can also save £10 for the first two months when you sign up to their £25 ‘Super Value’ deal which comes with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of mobile internet. This is certainly the most interesting option in our eyes and is definitely worth a look at that price. There is even a tablet deal giving 500MB of data for just £5. To see the full list of deals, head over here.

At the core of The People’s Operator’s business model is their aim to raise millions for UK causes by offering great value mobile deals. Not only do they enable members to give 10% of their bill to a charity or cause of their choice, but they are also committed to sharing 25% of profits with good causes. As this doesn’t cost you the user anything extra, you can’t complain about that.

The charitable funds are allocated through the TPO Foundation, a transparent and independent legal entity run by trustees and chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly. The Foundation was set up to award funds to organisations, local communities and charities making a positive difference to people’s lives.

The People’s Operator runs with the the belief that no cause is too big or small, and so it gives users the opportunity to donate to any cause close to their heart. Members can nominate a charity they would like to help or choose from the network’s long list of partners, which includes national organisations such as The Big Issue, Children’s Heart Federation, Childline, NSPCC, Regenerate, The Trussell Trust, and Trinity Hospice.

The People’s Operator launched only a few months ago in November last year and it already received a great deal of interest for their innovative approach. Running on the UK’s biggest 3G network provider, EE, they boast over 98% coverage of the UK and have taken steps to ensure switching from other operators is simple and easy to do. Unlike some other virtual networks, they offer an in-house customer service team on-call seven days a week, as well as simple set-up for data settings on Android, iPhone and other major mobile platforms.

Having only initially launched with PAYG services available, TPO has continued to offer some of the lowest pay as you go prices in the UK. Calls cost half that of other major operators such O₂, Orange, Vodafone, and T-Mobile however they are not the cheapest available. However, like some other cut-price networks, members also benefit from free calls and texts to others on the network. The People’s Operator say that the addition of pay monthly deals will only go to further attract new members and strengthen their support for good causes. And with some of the competitive offers available on a monthly basis, we’re inclined to agree. So, if you’re interested doing what The People’s Operator say and “turning your calls into kindness” why not check out the deals today and take a look at their new money saving deals.

What’s your thoughts? Are these monthly bundles good value for money? Are you tempted to switch? And do you think that the opportunity to do something good while using your mobile is an effective incentive?

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