Terrible Value offered by Irish Mobile Providers

Glenbhoy

Just a quick rant about something I've always known and presume the rest of you do too. Our providers offer appalling deals compared to those offered by the same provider in the UK.

Yesterday I signed my mother up with a new three UK contract, the deal costs £13 per month and gives her a samsung touch phone of some type (can't remember) for free along with a mix of 500 mins and texts to any network and something like 3000 or 5000 minutes 3 to 3.
I think there's also possibly 500MB of internet usage too, but an add can be bought for feck all anyway.

I signed up to a new deal last week and pay €40 per month for 350 flexi-units and 2GB of data. The deals aren't really comparable are they.

On a similar topic, can anyone explain why any Irish user continues with Vodafone or O2 - maybe I don't understand something, but their plans are truly appalling value compared to those offered by meteor and three.

Maybe if more people switched we would start to see price plans coming down and deals more comparable to those offered elsewhere might become the norm.

angel01

The UK has to be more competitive due to the amount of people living there, we are a much smaller population so the networks can screw us.

I moved from O2 to three and best thing I ever did

n900guy

Roaming with Vodafone is much much better if you want to receive calls; ie.., with passport you pay a flat fee to receive and it's not per minute billing.

Also, roaming data varies between providers. Three is good locally but much more limited than O2 or Voda when roaming. All networks have their "angle".

Glenbhoy

Re roaming - i've been with both three and meteor over the past 6/7 years and they've always offered some incentive for roaming in the UK at least, as a nordie, that's always been very important for me.
Currently, and one of the main reasons I stay with three (meteor were very tempting this time around) is that half of my free units can be used either making calls to or receiving calls in the following countries:
UK, Hong Kong, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Denmark. I know it's limited but it suits me as I am in the the north fairly frequently.

I think providers here rely on the inertia of the population, it's no coincidence that Vodafone and O2 were the original two mobile providers in the state and that the newbies are the ones who offer the better value, at least for the average domestic consumer.

Kristopherus

n900guy wrote: »

Roaming with Vodafone is much much better if you want to receive calls; ie.., with passport you pay a flat fee to receive and it's not per minute billing.

Also, roaming data varies between providers. Three is good locally but much more limited than O2 or Voda when roaming. All networks have their "angle".

Roaming with Voda or O2 is a rip-off. Far, far better value with Meteor or Three. With Meteor if you pick T-mobile in UK, its practically the same as local service. With Three if you pick ThreeUK you have the sam call & text rate as what is in your bundle. No contest imho.

Wicklowrider

I've found tesco fair enough, their prepay here and when out of the country is reasonable to the point I don't have to be checking on length of calls etc.Worth getting phone unlocked and switching.
Also this might be of use if you haven't already checked:
http://www.callcosts.ie/mobile_phones/Mobile_Calculator.123.LE.asp

ardmacha

The UK has to be more competitive due to the amount of people living there, we are a much smaller population so the networks can screw us.

So smaller countries, Finland, Singapore etc invariably have more expensive mobile services? Do you have an evidence of this?

Roaming with Voda or O2 is a rip-off. Far, far better value with Meteor or Three. With Meteor if you pick T-mobile in UK, its practically the same as local service.

So how exactly is Meteor with T-Mobile better than Vodafone using Voda UK?

Ghandee

angel01 wrote: »

The UK has to be more competitive due to the amount of people living there, we are a much smaller population so the networks can screw us.

I moved from O2 to three and best thing I ever did

plus one!

3 ireland have the best value by a country mile! coverage etc SPOT ON!

also another nordie here, calling families mobile's etc has now become free too!

Time Magazine

ardmacha wrote: »

So smaller countries, Finland, Singapore etc invariably have more expensive mobile services? Do you have an evidence of this?

Finland is hardly a fair example when it comes to mobiles. It's like using Dublin and beer or Detroit and cars.

Again, Singapore is smaller than Louth but has a population of 5 million. Hardly a fair comparison.

It is generally true though that in goods that can't easily be traded internationally (like haircuts or mobile phone service) population size/density is an important determinant of the level of competition.

Mr Bloat

Glenbhoy wrote: »

Just a quick rant about something I've always known and presume the rest of you do too. Our providers offer appalling deals compared to those offered by the same provider in the UK.

Yesterday I signed my mother up with a new three UK contract, the deal costs £13 per month and gives her a samsung touch phone of some type (can't remember) for free along with a mix of 500 mins and texts to any network and something like 3000 or 5000 minutes 3 to 3.
I think there's also possibly 500MB of internet usage too, but an add can be bought for feck all anyway.

I signed up to a new deal last week and pay €40 per month for 350 flexi-units and 2GB of data. The deals aren't really comparable are they.

On a similar topic, can anyone explain why any Irish user continues with Vodafone or O2 - maybe I don't understand something, but their plans are truly appalling value compared to those offered by meteor and three.

Maybe if more people switched we would start to see price plans coming down and deals more comparable to those offered elsewhere might become the norm .

Just to comment on the text I have highlighted, my company uses O2 and has for years. We're not tied to them because they offer any fantastic value or anything, it's simply down to cell coverage. Most businesses would deal with Voda or O2 because they would be seen as having the best coverage across the country and for businesses, it's more important to be able to make or get a call when you need to than it is to save a tenner or so a month. Perhaps Meteor or 3 could offer a similar level of coverage but if we were to switch to one of these companies, we would be tied into a contract for at least a year and that's a long year if it turned out that they didn't have the coverage we needed.
Can anyone tell me; if we switched to the likes of Meteor, 3 or the new emobile crowd and we realised after a few weeks that the coverage wasn't up to scratch, can we terminate the contract early without penalty? If so, how long is the 'cooling off' period?

CantGetNoSleep

In my experience we are much more expensive than the UK, but good (even great) value when compared to Europe

woodzie

Mr Bloat wrote: »

Just to comment on the text I have highlighted, my company uses O2 and has for years. We're not tied to them because they offer any fantastic value or anything, it's simply down to cell coverage. Most businesses would deal with Voda or O2 because they would be seen as having the best coverage across the country and for businesses, it's more important to be able to make or get a call when you need to than it is to save a tenner or so a month. Perhaps Meteor or 3 could offer a similar level of coverage but if we were to switch to one of these companies, we would be tied into a contract for at least a year and that's a long year if it turned out that they didn't have the coverage we needed.
Can anyone tell me; if we switched to the likes of Meteor, 3 or the new emobile crowd and we realised after a few weeks that the coverage wasn't up to scratch, can we terminate the contract early without penalty? If so, how long is the 'cooling off' period?

3 use Vodafone's network where they dont have 3g so if you switch to them you should have coverage everywhere where vodafone has coverage.

Glenbhoy

Mr Bloat wrote: »

Just to comment on the text I have highlighted, my company uses O2 and has for years. We're not tied to them because they offer any fantastic value or anything, it's simply down to cell coverage. Most businesses would deal with Voda or O2 because they would be seen as having the best coverage across the country and for businesses, it's more important to be able to make or get a call when you need to than it is to save a tenner or so a month. Perhaps Meteor or 3 could offer a similar level of coverage but if we were to switch to one of these companies, we would be tied into a contract for at least a year and that's a long year if it turned out that they didn't have the coverage we needed.
Can anyone tell me; if we switched to the likes of Meteor, 3 or the new emobile crowd and we realised after a few weeks that the coverage wasn't up to scratch, can we terminate the contract early without penalty? If so, how long is the 'cooling off' period?

I remember when I first moved to meteor about 7 years ago, i had problems in the very north of donegal, but had a signal most other places. With three I have never been without a signal (and normally it's 3G) and I do see a fair bit of the country. As the other poster says, they piggyback on vodafone where 3g is not available.

The cooling off period is only 14 days afaik.

BostonB

I'm on O2 because almost everyone else I phone is and free O2 to O2 made sense. Well it made sense a year or more ago.

I haven't looked at it in detail, but now it looks like the new plans with 3 Flexi-Units for example do basically the same thing but across all networks and indeed cover data aswell for the same if not less then the O2 costs. I looks like it will be less because you won't be hit for going outside your plan as you are with O2.