Vodafone šŸ¤¦ā€ā™‚ļø

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What is this supposed to mean?

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They have sent me an email to say that Iā€™m 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 Iā€™ve 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.

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So you donā€™t think you have used 57GB of data this month?

No, I have 57gb left :joy:

How do people use so much data? I was in hospital for a week mostly watching Netflix and I donā€™t think I broke 4GB. Iā€™m genuinely very interested, I always assumed these enormous plans were just a way to rip people off

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ā€œMobTechā€ I mean :man_facepalming: definitely needs to be a thingā€¦

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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.

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Thatā€™s what I mean, Iā€™m suprised it hasnā€™t been doneā€¦ Maybe we are on to something :thinking:

Edit: Or maybeā€¦ Monzo Mobile?

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Mine is generally games tbhā€¦ I play MMORPGS on my phone :yum:

Wow Iā€™ve just realised as well, the email even says that my allowance is 60GBā€¦

Wtf :joy:

Any companies youā€™d cite as doing good stuff?

Mine when it launches? :joy:

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 itā€™s worth paying for in my opinion.

There is also https://pebblenetwork.ltd.uk/ which looks decent; itā€™s on my todo list to actually give them a try but from the looks of it theyā€™re 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, theyā€™ll never be able to match what the big carriers offer, a few reasons for that:

  1. the big playerā€™s business models are often based on scamming and selling you more data in advance than what youā€™ll actually use
  2. outsourcing all engineering & customer service to the lowest bidder
  3. 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 itā€™s 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 youā€™ll 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 itā€™s 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 thereā€™s also no ā€œneutralā€ 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 youā€™re targeting a niche market but will not cut it if you want to be their direct competitor.

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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 Iā€™ve not seen on any other network working, plus SMS over WiFi Calling

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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 Ericssonā€™s latest magic box), but most donā€™t give a shit sadly.

That was a seriously interesting read, I canā€™t believe it is that complicatedā€¦ But that makes perfect sense as to why it hasnā€™t happenedā€¦

Thanks for the insight :sunglasses:

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 isnā€™t 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.

Thatā€™s certainly true for many people, Iā€™d 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.