Mobile Network Comparison

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?

That’s right. The most detailed, up-to-date and comprehensive comparison of the UK’s mobile phone networks just got better.

We originally built our comparison table to help you work out which mobile network offers the best deal for you. We think that by giving you all the information, you’ll be able to choose the best value network for your specific needs and usage patterns. Many mobile networks advertise with misleading graphics that only quote some of their prices and even hide their costs from their websites – this puts all the relevant costs in one place.

We were the first and, despite being copied many times over the years, we still think we’re the best. To keep our comparison table up-to-date and relevant we’ve put a ton of work in over the last few weeks to manually check all the details and update tariffs and pricing. We also added dozens of new networks to the sample including Talkxtra, Wildlife Mobile, Econet, Kontakt Mobile, Lomo Mobile, Simple Call Mobile, Smart Pinoy and Talk Home Mobile. We now offer a total of 45 different tariffs to compare!

Other tweaks we’ve made include restyling the same to make room for a frequently-requested Voicemail column. Also, after working to make sure we’re the most up-to-date site on the web for UK mobile phone coverage maps and 4G signal figures, we updated all the coverage columns on the comparison table to the latest figures.

As a result, it’s the only network comparison chart that really includes everything. And to make life easier, we designed it so that you can sort any column in ascending or descending order so you can instantly see which networks have the best prices. This helps you save money in the simplest way possible.

To top it all off, we’re offering a colour-coded PDF of our table as a completely free download. This makes it really easy to see at-a-glance which networks offer the best value and it’s perfect for printing out to refer to.

As ever, we welcome your thoughts and comments. And if you notice anything that’s out of date or any inaccuracies please let us know. Thanks!

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!