What is this supposed to mean?
They have sent me an email to say that Iām going over my data usage and I need to change my plan to avoid chargesā¦ Look how much data I get (first photo) and how much data Iāve used on average in the past three monthsā¦ (second photo)
No surprise here, shitty code doing just what it was designed to do - being built down to a cheap price somewhere abroad.
So you donāt think you have used 57GB of data this month?
No, I have 57gb left
How do people use so much data? I was in hospital for a week mostly watching Netflix and I donāt think I broke 4GB. Iām genuinely very interested, I always assumed these enormous plans were just a way to rip people off
āMobTechā I mean definitely needs to be a thingā¦
I just wish one of these companies actually took pride in proper engineering & customer service and raised the bar; everyone else would follow or go out of business.
Thatās what I mean, Iām suprised it hasnāt been doneā¦ Maybe we are on to something
Edit: Or maybeā¦ Monzo Mobile?
Mine is generally games tbhā¦ I play MMORPGS on my phone
Wow Iāve just realised as well, the email even says that my allowance is 60GBā¦
Wtf
Any companies youād cite as doing good stuff?
Mine when it launches?
Andrews & Arnold do mobile SIMs but their pricing model is quite unusual - you also pay for inbound voice and texts, in addition to data by the megabyte. But you get A&A customer service so itās worth paying for in my opinion.
There is also https://pebblenetwork.ltd.uk/ which looks decent; itās on my todo list to actually give them a try but from the looks of it theyāre a small UK company so customer service should be local and thus light-years ahead from what the big carriers offer. Same issue as A&A though, it is quite pricey.
The main issue is that whatever company you choose, theyāll never be able to match what the big carriers offer, a few reasons for that:
- the big playerās business models are often based on scamming and selling you more data in advance than what youāll actually use
- outsourcing all engineering & customer service to the lowest bidder
- the small providers just buy bandwidth from the big players, which will never give them a good rate that matches what they offer to consumers, otherwise their own customers will all switch to the smaller provider
Good luck with that. It might sound crazy but itās way more challenging to set up a mobile network (excluding MVNOs, which is out of the question when you want to disrupt the market as youāll be in direct competition with your host network) than a bank.
The finance field is tough (lots of regulations to comply, etc) but at the very least itās fair; if you want to go through all the certifications and get your banking license, you can. MasterCard will happily hook you up and you can start issuing cards.
The mobile field is less regulated, but thereās also no āneutralā party equivalent to MasterCard that will give you easy access; you have to win the license to operate on certain frequencies at an auction (and bid against the big players with billions in the bank) and then build out towers all over the country before you can even serve your first customer; unless you have global coverage your network will be next to useless. The alternative is to partner with one of the big players, which might work if youāre targeting a niche market but will not cut it if you want to be their direct competitor.
calls can fall back to VoLTE from WiFi when leaving the WiFi area and VoLTE calls can pass to 3G when leaving a VoLTE area, something Iāve not seen on any other network working, plus SMS over WiFi Calling
[emphasis mine]
Which is very sad as all of those are part of the VoLTE specs and have been there for ages. Networks should be proud of implementing all that (preferably in-house instead of just buying Ericssonās latest magic box), but most donāt give a shit sadly.
That was a seriously interesting read, I canāt believe it is that complicatedā¦ But that makes perfect sense as to why it hasnāt happenedā¦
Thanks for the insight
How do you know all of that?!
And because you are a small network, your customers will mostly be calling customers on the big networks to whom you will have to pay termination fees.
On the other hand voice is pretty much irrelevant nowadays so this really isnāt a big deal; if we imagine a mobile network similar to Monzo with a proper stack and low overheads, they can give away the calls completely free and still end up profitable.
Thatās certainly true for many people, Iād guess (me included, 10-20 minutes a month), but the OP has managed 363 minutes so far.
Which is still nothing in the grand scheme of things, national termination rates are very very low.