Mobile Network Comparison

A breath of fresh air in the mobile market – Three Mobile are pushing forward and expanding their Feel At Home scheme (previously covered here) which helps you save money when using your mobile abroad. Unlike the other mobile networks who have been greedily cashing in on exorbitant charges for using your mobile overseas, Three’s deal makes using your phone completely free in several countries as you can use your existing UK allowances.

To learn more about how to benefit from this amazing deal or to order a free SIM with Feel At Home no-cost roaming, click here.

Like many mobile operators, Three has business relationships with several foreign networks though its parent company (Hutchison Whampoa) and they have made the most of these to improve things for their customers while they are abroad. Feel At Home originally launched with USA, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Macau, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland covered by the deal. At the beginning of this month, they added France, Switzerland, Israel, Finland and Norway.

Even after the EU started helping consumers out by regulating the international market, we frequently heard tales of gargantuan bills caused by overseas roaming charges. With modern smartphones, it is easy to run up £100s in a few hours browsing the internet and even a quick call to loved ones back home can cost more than your hotel room for the night. Things are often significantly worse if you’re visiting countries not in Europe.

Three’s scheme means that you only have to pay the normal UK rates for making calls, sending texts or even browsing the web with your mobile data connection. This also means that if you have an inclusive allowances that provide a certain amount of minutes, texts or megabytes of data, these will still be usable when you roaming. So when you’re on holiday, you can use up your monthly allowance that would otherwise end up going to waste. And with many Three Mobile tariffs including unlimited data, the possibility of saving huge amount of money on roaming internet access are huge.

We think this is great news as, traditionally, roaming charges have hit consumers’ wallets hard. Most the time, the mobile networks have done little to make this any better and have happily pocketed profits they’ve been making. Now, it’s almost worth picking up a Three Mobile PAYG SIM if you’re going away to one of the countries listed for about a couple of weeks. Just be aware that if you are a PAYG customer you need to purchase an add-on to benefit from this and the SIM must have been active for 30 days before it will work.

Are you going on holiday this summer? Any where nice? And will you be taking advantage of Three’s Feel At Home while you’re away?

Update: Subsequent to publishing the below article, iCard’s insolvency notice was published in The London Gazette. So it’s now verified – as of 27 June 2014, iCard Mobile Limited have been in administration.

The mobile industry is awash with rumours that cut-price MVNO iCard Mobile is going out of business potentially leaving thousands of customers stranded. The budget virtual network is struggling with huge debts and insider sources are even claiming the company might already have gone into administration.

Our investigations have been unable to confirm anything so far, but iCard have looked a bit wobbly recently. The network was launched in September 2010 and is run by an established entity called iCard Telecom.

However, some of our readers reported that their website was completely down earlier in the week and others claimed that their calling cards suddenly stopped working. They also recently ended their free calls deal without any notification to customers. Whatever the true situation is behind the scenes, it appears that there might be major cashflow issues.

Other sources have made unconfirmed comments that their money woes have forced the network into receivership due to approximately £12 million of unpaid debts. The last accounts published by iCard do not confirm this yet even though their cash reserves were stated to stand at a paltry £10,000 against liability of almost £3 million.

Following the rapid collapse of OVIVO earlier in the year, it’s clear some virtual networks are struggling to surviving in the competitive UK market. Having said that, we’ve been unable to get any official comment from iCard Mobile so far so it must be stressed that this is just a rumour and nothing has been officially confirmed yet.

So, roughly two years after it was first announced at Google I/O, Glass is finally getting an official release in the UK. The price tag is a whopping £1000 per pair and they are now on general availability to anyone.

Since Google Glass was first announced, there’s been a huge demand which Google have exploited with exclusive review copies given away to prominent celebrities and tech journalists. Whilst some are celebrating them as ushering in a new paradigm of wearable computing, others have mocked the smartglasses and expressed privacy concerns about the internally-mounted camera.

Despite the fact it has been in development for several years now and cost a small fortune, Google still claim that officially Google Glass is still a beta product. This is only the second country to get an official release and it’s clear that if you fork out for a pair now, you’re very much an early adopter of a prototype device. Google is relying on these people’s input to shape further improvements and development. At the same time, they are hoping to drastically reduce the price over the next few years by a whole order of magnitude.

Since they are worn as glasses, unsurprisingly, Google is already able to add prescription lenses and sunglasses lenses. Compared to earlier versions of the product, the UK variant boasts an improved battery life as well as British English voice recognition. Glass runs Google’s own software and can even run customised Android apps known as “Glassware”.

Google Glass has come under fire from privacy advocates because it can record video without subjects being aware of it, and that any video will be routed through Google’s servers. And in the UK, other concerns have already been raised. Some cinemas have banned the devices due to piracy fears while the Department for Transport has been consulted on whether wearing Glass could distract drivers when travelling on British roads. On the other hand, many business are biding their time to gauge the reaction to Glass – Wetherspoons has stated that it “discuss the matter in due course” while British Airways said its customers could wear Glass at any time on board its aircraft, as long as they put it in flight safety mode when necessary.

What do you think of Google Glass? Is it just a pointless gimmick or does it have real-world uses? Are you concerned about privacy or are you dying to get your hands on a pair? And would you pay £1000 to attach stupid-looking prototype glasses to your head?