Harry: [00:00:00] Uh, can you hear me? Hello? Do you have a bad line? You do? Well on today's show we'll be finding out how to boost your mobile reception, which provider is best, and how to avoid being cut off in the great 3G switch off. We'll be joined by tech journalist David McClelland and Witch's own Adam Snook, so don't hang up.
I'm Harry Kind. And I'm Lisa Webb. And this is Get Answers, for living your best consumer life.
Lisa: When life gives you questions, Witch, Get Answers.
Harry: Lisa, a great week to have you on the show, because while Wales is home to a great many things, reliable mobile signal is not one of them. I've got the data here, 24 percent of houses are 4G not spots for at least one network, and one in 20 miles of major roads have no 4G from any provider.
Does that include your house, Lisa?
Lisa: Well, my house. in Cardiff has absolutely no [00:01:00] phone reception inside it. But I think a lot of that is down to the house itself, because in the street outside and the garden outside, I'm okay, I can get a call. Inside, no one's getting hold of me unless they're using Wi Fi.
Harry: Big thick walls.
Lisa: Yeah, thick walls, and it's a terrace as well, so I think all of the other houses on either side are also blocking the signal. That's my theory anyway.
Harry: I've got pretty shoddy Reception in my flat like the further away you get from the outside wall, and I think it's because it's got metal studs So I think it's a great big faraday cage.
There's no internet getting out I sometimes have my phone up against the window or on the balcony and i'm with my bluetooth headset somewhere else in the house Just so I can have a phone call. It's a pain. No one feels like they've got a good mobile signal
Lisa: Interestingly, no phone network inside my house, but the thieves can still extend, uh, the car key from inside the house.
Harry: You know this from experience.
Lisa: I know this from experience. The reason I thought that is because you mentioned Faraday cage and I [00:02:00] do have a Faraday box now to keep my car keys in to prevent that range extender theft.
Harry: Well, we aren't going to be talking about Faraday cages today, sadly. No, probably best that we don't.
But we do want definitive answers on how to improve our call quality. So, we've put together a panel of top mobile experts. Dave McClelland is a technology journalist you might recognize from Ripoff Britain and GMB. I hope he doesn't mind me saying that he's been an expert on mobile phones since they were the size of house bricks.
Also in the studio is writer and researcher Adam Snook, one of our mobile phone specialists here at Which. Hello to both of you. Hello.
David: Hello, hello. Still smarting from the phones as old as bricks comment, but it's actually very true.
Harry: That's probably about accurate. I can remember big brick sized phones.
Even in all that time, phones might have had all the kind of, like, bells and whistles added to them. But let's go back to basics here. How do mobile phones work?
David: So, inside your mobile device, there are a handful of [00:03:00] antennas, or, or aerials, and back in the days when phones were bricks, you can actually see these antennae.
In fact, on my first phone, 1996, when I first walked in the door here at Witch Towers, by the way, you had to pull out the aerial on your phone in order to make a call on it. But these days, antenna are generally built into the chassis of the phone, so you don't need to worry about it so much. Anyway, so those antenna, they will tune in to antenna on nearby mobile masts or cell sites as they are.
And that enables the wireless transfer of your voice. Uh, if you are still making phone calls on your mobile phone, who That anymore, uh, of your messages and of browsing data. And these mobile masks themselves are quite important because they're also connected to the mobile network, uh, using fiber. Mm-hmm, or sometimes using wireless of their own, uh, microwaves, for example.
And each one of these cell sites. They can cover a few square miles. It depends if you're in a city and there's lots of buildings in the way. And the thing that's important about that is, let's say [00:04:00] you are driving in a car or on the train. You might be on the phone to somebody, but your phone is constantly switching between those cell sites.
It's a process known as handoff. So you don't realize that you might be across a few dozen different mobile masts in the course of a 10 minute conversation, but your phone's doing all of that, all wirelessly, all magically. in the background.
Harry: Which is really quite impressive, more than you kind of almost imagine they're like walkie talkie somehow, that it is just a very boring simple technology, but actually this is a complicated, it is a network.
David: It is a really complicated network and particularly when you start to build in all the different network technologies that are part of it, whether this is, you know, 2G, or 3G, or 4G, all of the Gs, whether you're talking about those. And these mobile masks and the phones are having to accommodate all of these different standards, some of them going back 20 or so years.
Harry: Well, let's get onto those kind of bit of jargon, but those standards, those Gs, we see them in the corner of our phone, we know more Gs is better. But can you give a kind [00:05:00] of brief summary, either of you, Adam, David, on what really those mean, and also what edge and LTE stand for?
David: Well, G stands for generation, and that's a new generation of hardware on those cell towers or in your phone, but also in terms of software and speed and capabilities and so on.
Broadly speaking, we see a new G, a new generation every 10 years or so, so 3G is about 10 years old. 20 or so years now that came out in the early 2000s. 4G in the early 20 teens and 5G we started to see just as the millennium ticked over. Now it's actually a little bit more complicated than that and you mentioned things like edge and LTE and so on because 10 years is a really long time in the tech world.
So in between those generations we kind of get things like 3. 5G or 4. 5G, and that's where you start seeing things like Edge and LTE and HSPA, all which are trying to improve the speeds until the next big G comes along. You mentioned LTE, [00:06:00] sometimes that's referred to as 3. 95G. It's, oh god, in tech we just love our numbers and our strange acronyms and so on.
So it's faster than 3G, it's roughly analogous to the first lot of 4G, but it's not as fast as the 4G that we might see commonly. But sometimes it still gets bundled in the same sort of package, the same sort of a word that we'll see on our phones.
Harry: And 5G, the latest one, as the listeners of the tinfoil hat variety will know, like the masks look very different, it's quite, am I right in saying that the cells on these are smaller, that you will have to have more masks for, you know, uh, an area than kind of 3G system?
David: Yes and no. Now, as I say, 5G has been around for three or four years or so. And the first iterations of 5G are actually kind of 5G, but behind the curtain, they're still using a 4G core, the core network, you might see [00:07:00] 5G on your phone, but your upload speeds might still be 4G. What you're talking about, though, is what we might call, I think, millimeter wave 5G.
And these are these super high frequency bands that we don't tend to use in mobile communications at the moment. But these do have very different properties, and you will see those inside buildings, inside places. They don't penetrate walls quite so easily. But if you were in a room like we're in right now, you would get super fast speeds that would rival that of your Wi Fi.
But over 5G instead.
Harry: So, bring it to consumers, what it means for consumers. If you're shopping for a phone, or you're setting up a phone, you're buying a SIM card, Adam, you should be looking for 5G, do you think?
Adam: Yeah, definitely. And it's one of those things that's very difficult for customers to assess, because basically all networks will run TV ads saying we are the best, the fastest.
We're everything. Everyone else is terrible. So as a customer, it's really hard to actually tell what's happening. But yes, they should be looking for the best signal because you don't want to [00:08:00] be having it dropping out on you anywhere. And it will vary a lot by area. We do consistently find in our surveys every year.
that certain networks are rated better by their customers. So EE and Vodafone are always considered by their own customers to be reliable and have less issues. O2 is somewhere in the middle, and 3 unfortunately often comes last. And so for example, our most recent survey, over a quarter of 3 customers said they often had dropouts and signal issues.
David: Another perspective on that is Ofcom, of course, the communications regulator. They have their annual mobile matters report, and the most recent one of those from July 2023. This uses crowd sourced information. So again, going out to actual users, like Witch does, but to try and gauge their experience of mobile use in the UK.
And there's some really interesting insights there, I think, from that most recent report about some differences, and in particular, I'm afraid, that O2's mobile network does seem to lag [00:09:00] behind in a number of areas. Download and upload speeds on 4G and 5G, the length of time it takes to download files across 3G, 4G and 5G, the latency, so that's the response time, how quickly it takes you to come back with something, they all seem to be behind compared to other mobile networks.
Again, I would point towards the Ofcom checker. And that, uh, interestingly looks at not only your, your broadband, it looks at your inside, your ability to make and receive voice calls and use data services inside your home, as well as outside your home. But the thing to bear in mind is here, we're talking about wireless communications.
The majority of time that we spend on our phones, We're actually on Wi Fi, you know, whether we're in the office or increasingly on public transport, as well as at home, we're actually doing a lot of our browsing and watching video on demand, watching which on YouTube, whatever, using Wi Fi rather than on mobile.
Harry: And so if you are on Wi Fi, Are your phone calls still just going over that same [00:10:00] old mobile network connection or is there a way to actually just piggyback on top of a reliable data source?
David: Well, yes, and that's where we come into the world of Wi Fi calling. Little bit of history, before this Wi Fi calling thing was enabled, if you had poor coverage at home, even for your voice calls, then some mobile networks would offer you something like a signal booster, essentially.
It was a 3G hotspot for your home, technically called a femtocell, and you plug that into your wall, usually plugged in straight into a plug socket, and connect it up to your broadband, and that means you would have this little 3G cell site throughout your home, or throughout your office. Great! However, 3G, as I'm sure we'll come on to, is being switched off, being phased out, and these bits of kit were quite expensive.
So, instead, what's been happening for the last six or seven years or so, I would say, across most major handset manufacturers, is Wi Fi calling. And this does the same thing. It will log on to your Wi Fi network, and it will route your calls, if you enable it, over your Wi Fi connection. [00:11:00] Not only your calls, but your text messages as well.
So, even if you live in Inside, in a nutspot, I live in a 150 year old house. Those walls are thick. It's very difficult to get pure play cellular calls in my house, but with Wi Fi calling enabled and I've got good Wi Fi in my house, then I can still use my phone as if I was out on the street, where I do get good coverage.
Lisa: I need some advice on this then. Let's make this personal. Okay. So I live in a very classic Cardiff Terrace House, sort of early turn of the 1900s. And my reception inside my house is dire, really bad. So whenever anyone at which is trying to get a hold of me, I'm like, nope, you've got to do video calls, you've got to do Wi Fi, because my Wi Fi is good.
But I don't know how to turn Wi Fi calling on on my phone. Also, I want to know about being able to check what the network coverage is like inside as well as outside, because at the bottom of my garden, no problem. The second I step inside my kitchen back door, I've got nothing.
David: Okay, so in terms of enabling Wi Fi [00:12:00] calling on your phone, there are hundreds of different types of phone out there.
So I'll try and give the most generic, but most applicable piece of advice. In fact, are you going to get your phone out right now? Amazing.
Lisa: I'm not going to let this pass. I've got you here. I'm not going to let you get away with not fixing my phone.
David: Lisa, I want to enable you. So, You have a really lovely looking Android.
If you could go into your settings. I'm going to look on my iPhone as well, so we should have about 99 percent of the population covered if I go onto my iPhone. Okay, I'm in settings. Now, in the olden days, I would say, right, I'm Navigate down to general, go into calls, go into other, or something like that.
I'm not going to say that right now because right at the top of my screen, I'm on an iPhone 14 with the latest version of iOS. You're on a very recent Android phone. Right at the top, you'll see a search. That is an acknowledgement from most mobile device manufacturers that there are too many things in these settings.
So in search on my iPhone, I'm going to type [00:13:00] Y, then put a little And in there I'm seeing three options. I can see a Wi Fi setting but I can also see a phone setting. If I tap on phone and then just look midway through the screen, I can see a little setting there called Wi Fi calling. It is currently switched to on.
in my phone. Lisa, what can I see on yours?
Lisa: I think I might have ruined the experiment because I've done the search and I put in Wi Fi calling, didn't even have to put the little dash in between Y and 5. I just found it. There is Wi Fi calling, but it's greyed out. There's also advanced calling, 4G calling, operator video calling, and then a whole bunch of other things.
David: So VOLTE there is voice over LTE, VO 5G is voice over 5G. So different operators provide different ways of being able to make calls over the various networks that are available. I'm a little bit disappointed that Wi Fi calling isn't enabled on your phone.
Lisa: Now, is it down to the manufacturer or is it down to the network?
David: [00:14:00] Well, again, it can be complicated. It depends. If in doubt, then I would get in touch with your mobile network just to make sure that that is going to be available for you. I wish I could wave a magic wand and have some consistency across all mobile devices. Alas, I don't have that power. Something else to
Adam: keep in mind with Wi Fi calling is that, yeah, it's great, but it will also take the calls and texts out of your allowance.
So it's fine if you're unlimited calls and texts. But just to keep an eye on it if you've got like a limited package or something.
Harry: Oh, well, it's really useful to know. So we briefly talked about the Big Four. I feel like every industry seems to have a Big Four, a Big Five, Big Three. Adam, who are the Big Four?
So Big Four is EE, O2, Vodafone
Adam: and Free. And what makes them so big? So they're the only networks that own their own infrastructure. They actually own the towers that we were discussing and all the different technologies that are used in that. And then the smaller MVNOs piggyback off these networks.
Lisa: What's an MVNO?
David: A Mobile Virtual Network Operator. One that doesn't own [00:15:00] its own infrastructure and instead it leases one of the top four's infrastructure like Adam says.
Harry: And it's amazing that those big four They are the only players in town for owning the infrastructure. They are almost like the railway operators.
And then these like virtual networks can ride their trains on their rails. Is that an analogy? That's a really good analogy. The big
David: four could become the Big Three very soon.
Harry: Who's looking to merge?
David: Well, Three and Vodafone announced a potential merger last year, which would see them with maybe nearly 30 million customers, but that is being subjected to an investigation by the competition markets authority, the competition watchdog, because the CMA is concerned that by collapsing to providers, there will be less competition for consumers, resulting in worse prices and potentially less investment in infrastructure, resulting in worse services as well, worse [00:16:00] quality of service as well.
So that's what the CMA is there for, to try and make sure that us as consumers get a good deal, just like which.
Lisa: I mean, I'd be pretty concerned that by reducing four to three, you're reducing competition. So that's going to have an impact on, on consumer choice.
David: So one of the benefits that 3 and Vodafone in their joint statement, they expressed that by pooling their resources together, quite the opposite.
They say that they'll be able to increase the investment in the infrastructure and in the network. So it'll be a better deal for consumers. But then maybe that's what they would say. Uh, and it's for the likes of the CMA who've now gone to a phase two investigation, which can take up to six months or so.
And well, Vodafone and three have come back with a statement just to say that this is an expected next step in the process and it is in line with the time frame for completion that we set out from the outset. So
Harry: let's see. I'm guessing consumers might be listening and thinking well [00:17:00] one benefit maybe for me if there was this merger of these two of the big four is that At the moment, I don't get signal from Vodafone, but I do have signal from another network in my house.
And if there was a merger, would I be able to use either of those networks in my house? Now, is that at all accurate? Are there many people in that situation? And is there anything that people can do if they, uh, are basically stuck with one network that is supplying their house.
David: Yes, indeed. And again, going to a good quality coverage checker will tell you which of those mobile networks gives you good quality calling indoors as well as outdoors.
And on some of them, you can look around a map as well and see different colours. Is that going to work while I'm dropping off the kids to school or in the back garden and so on? Going back to the mobile virtual network operators, what's really interesting about them is the variety that they offer you away from those big fours.
So, for example, you know, GIFGAF is one of the popular MVNOs. [00:18:00] They sit on top of O2's network. They're actually owned by Telefonica, which owns O2, which is an interesting one. Libara, for example, they're great if you want to make international calls. You get a good number of inclusive international minutes in there.
But then there are some others as well. So one, for example, is called ParentShield, which is a child only network which can attach to whichever mobile network has the strongest signal. And it provides a layer of monitoring capabilities and alerting capabilities for parents. Things like that. Innovations like that.
I don't think you would see quite so easily from those established big four, big three, as it may be. But from the MVNOs, they've got a bit more flexibility to offer international calls or, or other things for parents. I think that's a really interesting space. So it's worth looking, I think, at some of those non traditional big fours and seeing if there are deals and features that might fit to whatever it is that you need.
Adam: Yeah, that's particularly true if you're traveling a lot. So as mentioned, the bar is good for international calls, [00:19:00] but also a much higher E roaming allowance. Along with ID Mobile as well, they'll give you 30 gigabytes free each month. So if you're sort of making several trips to Europe, it's quite easy for that to rack up, whereas a lot of Networks, it's only five gigabytes, or you have to pay for a kind of daily or monthly pass to access your data when you're abroad.
Harry: And crucially, these are just working, can't stress it enough, on the same networks as the Big Four. It's not like you're getting some off brand NAF kind of walkie talkie internet connection.
David: Actually, that's a really interesting point, because while you are using the parent networks, infrastructure, masts and so on, you will be being billed, you will receive customer support from the mobile virtual network operator and in the case of GIFGAP for example that is typically online support.
So that's the way in which they're able to provide maybe a better cost value by cutting back in some other areas. So again think of all the things that are important for you really when choosing any mobile deal.
Harry: When [00:20:00] we come back we'll have some hints and tips to help you choose your next phone or network.
Stay tuned.
In case you don't know, we do actually answer questions that are sent in by our listeners on GetAnswers, and our next episode will be on the subject of toilet paper. If you've got any questions about the low tech world of toilet paper, please send us an email at podcast at which. co. uk, and it could be featured in the episode.
Now back to phones. So thinking about that coverage map, there will be people out there who maybe get 2G or 3G, other people who are, you know, bathing in lovely 5G. But the 3G, that old network, is being switched off. Do people, my parents living in the middle of nowhere, who only get 3G if they're lucky, do they need to be
Adam: worried about that?
So, EU and Vodafone have already switched off their 3G networks. 3G is intending to by the end of this year, and O2 is going [00:21:00] to start next year. So, there just isn't going to be 3G coverage. So, people should be thinking about that, what that means for them now. So yeah, are they being covered by 4G, 5G? Is their phone 4G enabled?
And also, something that sometimes slips by is that a lot of non phone things rely on 3G signals. So if you've got something like a care alarm, or other sort of tech gadgets that rely on
Harry: and things like that. Yeah,
Adam: and they might be using 3G, so then suddenly if you haven't updated that or changed that, and then the networks have all switched off 3G, it's just not going to work.
Harry: And how are you going to find out if you need to make that change?
David: What I would say with things like burglar alarms and often telecare services as well, often you are using those as part of a service contract and your service contract provider would be able to identify whether you are connecting using a 3G connection and would be able to provide you with an update.
Potentially, I spoke with a lot of the mobile networks last year. I would say when the 3G retirement was was beginning [00:22:00] about exactly these kind of use cases. And I guess the good thing is that the mobile networks can tell they literally have the data as to who is connecting using a 3G connection. So they're able to identify in many cases down to the individual subscriber or look, you've got a device that's using 3G.
So they're able to send Text messages to those devices to those device owners to say, Hey, it looks like you're connecting on 3G. You might want to do something about that because we're switching it all off. But like you say, Vodafone has already switched off its networks.
Adam: Obviously, we don't want people to rely on being contacted by Vodafone.
We've had a lot of issues with this in terms of digital voice switch over. Well, yeah. it was happening and then suddenly they can't actually contact Food there. The other thing I'd say is
Lisa: if you do have a service contract with one of those gadgets that we mentioned, if your service provider starts trying to charge you for upgrading this stuff, I would say hold fast, dig your heels in, because if you've got a service contract in place and the gadget is [00:23:00] provided as a part of that, it needs to be fit for purpose.
If it isn't, because it can't connect to the networks that it needs, then have a word because they should not be trying to charge you for that kind of change.
Harry: And give us the pitch because there will be people who are listening saying, why are people messing around with this? I've got a perfectly good connection and you're just going to turn it off and leave me stranded.
Why are we turning off 3G and eventually the 2G network?
David: The mobile networks have told me that 3G networks are 20 years old. They are expensive to maintain, a lot of the parts are no longer being manufactured and it's expensive for them. Why should we care about that? Well, 3G networks are slow. 4G networks are much faster.
5G networks are much faster. The other things are around security, and of course the security of our communications is really important. And also about energy efficiency. A lot of this old hardware, particularly on the masts, on the cell towers, is [00:24:00] crunky old stuff that wasn't built with the sensibilities we have now about energy efficiency.
Whereas 4G, and particularly 5G This stuff is being built with security almost first and with energy efficiency almost first as well. So there are a lot of benefits particularly. And also you look at the number of 3G connections and there's data out here on this. It is a very, very small number of connections that are being made using 3G networks.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people are using 4G. Now, As the mobile networks have been switching off 3G, they've been making certain promises about we're not going to leave any users, any of our customers stranded without anything at all. So as they switch off 3G, then 4G will become available as well.
And that's certainly where I lived, where I struggled to get any Gs, frankly, in my little village. And I got maybe one or two at the bottom of the garden of 3G. Since 3G was switched off at some point in the last [00:25:00] four or five months, I've now got 3 or 4 bars of 4G, where I never had those before. So, I'm surprised, very pleasantly, by that.
But that is what the mobile networks say. We're not, as best as we can, going to leave any users stranded. Switching off 3G and leaving them with nothing at all. Where we switch off 3G, we're going to put something else in place for them.
Adam: It's also worth getting in touch with them because some were Considering offering phone upgrades for people that have only got 3G enabled phones.
So I'd say if you're in a situation, just get in touch with your network and just see what you can get really because they shouldn't be leaving people behind. So if they can help you, it's not a great look for them to be stranding people. So they are going to be. trying to help people if they can, hopefully.
Lisa: And they absolutely should, too, in my opinion. Can someone explain to me, why are we switching off 3G before 2G? Shouldn't it be in order?
David: There's a very, very good reason for that. So, 3G is, say, meant to be switched off by the end of 2025 or thereabouts. 2G is by the end of [00:26:00] 2033 so there's a much longer runway for that.
Now 2G networks are very often used for different things. If you're in an area where you don't get very much coverage but you do get 2G coverage that can be used for your voice calls very happily but also things like smart meters. Oh, I went there. I don't know. There's a lot of problems with smart meters, but a lot of these smart meters that have been deployed have a little 2G or 3G modem with them, particularly in the south of the UK.
And they are often provisioned or use the O2, Telefonica O2 network, which is another reason why O2 is a little bit further behind on its 3G retirement than the other mobile networks and why there's a lot longer runway to sunset 2G because of those Internet of Things infrastructure uses where it's just little bits of data every half an hour like your smart meters do, not massive wadges of data that you'd need a 3G or a 4G or a 5G network for.
Lisa: So when are we getting 6G?
David: Well, history would tell us that 6G [00:27:00] would be around about the early 2030s. 30s, but we don't really know what 6G is going to look like yet. And we haven't really got anywhere near what 5G can offer. Like I say, a lot of times 5G is kind of 4G in disguise still.
Harry: Well, let's bring it back then to just 2024.
What can you be doing to make sure that you're getting a phone plan that's going to work for you, that's going to provide what you need? What should you be looking for, Adam?
Adam: So as we've discussed, Signal is a big one. So our recommendation for that is to just try a one month rolling sim, sim only deal with different networks and see if you can find one that does work for you.
Because then you're only tied in for one month and you're not committing to a long term deal or anything like that. You can just see if it works, see if it's better, try it on your commute to work, um, and anywhere that you might normally be. And you might see that it performs differently to what you'd expect.
But mainly what we look at in terms of cost is how much data you use compared to how much you're paying for. So in the most recent [00:28:00] survey, the most common answer was that people had unlimited data.
Lisa: Presumably, if you're on Wi Fi all the time, do you ever really need it?
Adam: Yeah, it'd only be free if you're out and about, if you've got Wi Fi at home and at work and everything.
So yeah, we found actual usage, only 13 percent of people use more than 20 gigabytes. Wow. Which is so much less than obviously the unlimited, or even a hundred or fifty. It's an infinite
Harry: amount less, I would be happy to point out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you're saying that it's very rare that anyone's using more than twenty.
Adam: Yeah, and it's very, very, very few people will ever get anywhere near. Even a hundred. So I mean unlimited, it's just, you'd have to be kind of downloading high quality movies relentlessly and, you know, sort of permanently using your data. And you can get unlimited data for about 16 a month. So people are not necessarily being charged insane amounts for it.
I would think there's a kind of range for this. So if you're only using say five to ten. You might be paying for 50 and you could get a cheaper deal around 25, 30 gigabytes and you'll still [00:29:00] have loads of data left over and you'll just be paying maybe five pounds less a month.
Harry: So if you're struggling with your mobile bill, it is worth looking, are you using that much data?
And could you just shift to a plan which gives you less, but is still way more than you
Adam: need? People don't always know how to check. So you can either check on your phone settings as we tried with Wi Fi calling, you can search your data usage and your phone will be tracking it. And you can also usually check through your network's app, and you can sort of set alerts for how much you're using, so if you get near your limit, your phone will tell you and say, you know, you've used a lot of data this month that you may not have used.
David: Some mobile networks do, for example, and this is where it comes down to understanding what your use case is. If you have a family and your kids are on the, are on the same mobile network as you, then you can gift some data to your family with EE, I believe, we'll let you do that. So that's, that's something that might help you to choose one mobile network over another, just depends upon how you as a family use your mobile.
And also that can come down to which choice of mobile device you use as well. If you're all on [00:30:00] Android or if you're all on Apple and you have parental controls, that sort of thing becomes a whole lot easier rather than having a mixed family. I, you know, I might not be able to allow my kids an extra half an hour on Snapchat or whatever quite so easily if they're on Android and I'm on iOS or the opposite.
Harry: So that's important when picking your handset. I suppose when you're looking at just a SIM only deal, what really should be people be paying? Let's put it in pounds and pence. If you've got a bill coming through for 20 pounds a month, you're Yes.
Adam: I reckon you could get unlimited for around 16 pounds. If you're looking for, I don't know, less than 10 gigabytes, I wouldn't want to pay more than 5 to 10 pounds a month.
And something else is people often ask about kind of texts and calls, but Almost all deals now have unlimited for both. So when you're picking, you are basically just choosing your data allowance. But then as was briefly discussed, you also want to look at your EU roaming. If you're going to be traveling a lot, you don't want to get stuck with just say five gigabytes.
That's potentially not much when you're traveling because you might not have [00:31:00] Wi Fi access and you might be looking at maps more often, that kind of thing. And that has kind of become a battleground for the networks and that some of them are saying. You know, use us if you're going abroad, we will give you 30 gigabytes and you never have to worry about it.
And those others are sort of making you charge just to use your data, so.
Harry: I learnt this to, uh, my, uh, great pain when I was traveling across Europe, and I thought I had EU roaming, I was sorted. And I briefly checked my phone as our train broke down. rattle through the beautiful, uh, Alps. And I had the bad luck of connecting to the Lichtenstein mobile network and got charged something like five pounds for the few seconds that we were going through this tiny, tiny country because my plan, unlike my partner's plan, uh, didn't include that in their bundle.
Same with Switzerland, that there were a lot of people who would think that Switzerland would be included in their EU roaming deal, but But, uh, no dice, and they are getting charged.
David: But of course this all [00:32:00] changed back in, uh, January 2021, I think it was, when as part of the UK leaving the European Union, the inclusive roaming, and I remember going back to when I first started covering this stuff, the stories of bill shock.
People coming back from their fortnight in Spain were landed with, uh, bills of thousands of pounds on their doormats. That all ended thanks to being as part of the European Union, but then that all ended, uh, when we left the European Union. So, just, just a thing to check on, because my, I'll let you into a secret.
My mobile contract is only 20 gigabytes, and I very, very, very rarely exceed that, and it expired in 2018, and I haven't renewed it since then. And I tell you why, because there still isn't a better deal for me in terms of what I get bundled in there. Including the roaming plan.
Harry: Yeah, so we can't all be lucky enough to have these antique plans which have got, uh, you know, amazing travel opportunities.
Lisa, you traveled to Mexico [00:33:00] recently. And you used an eSIM. I did. How does that work?
Lisa: Now, it's Because I work for Which, I, and I'm not shaming you, Harry, this is, this is not a shame, but I looked up on my network, so we've mentioned I'm on La Barra, and it's good for traveling, it's good for international, but Mexico wasn't included in my plan, which I was like, oh, no Mexico, okay, fine.
And I wanted to make sure I could at least use my Google Maps while I was trying to navigate the streets of Mexico City. So I had a look, and there were these local Mexican eSIMs that were available to me for next to nothing. Like, pence to be able to acquire one of these. And
Harry: an eSIM is different than a SIM card because
Lisa: There was no card.
Harry: What?
Lisa: David explained. There was nothing.
David: So an eSIM is like a digital SIM card. What's a SIM card? It's a subscriber identifier module, and it basically ties you and your contract to the physical device, your phone. Now, [00:34:00] if for example, and maybe I did this last year, if you drop your phone, and it breaks, and you want to transfer your identity into another phone, you can take that physical SIM out of your phone and put it into another phone, and then, You're up and running again.
With an eSIM, it is digitally part of your phone. And there are a number of benefits there. The ability to quickly sign up to a deal abroad, for example. You know, as soon as you land in that country, you're not having to speak whatever the lingo is in the newsagents at the airport. You can just sign up.
Zap a thing, download a thing, and you're on a local network. Did it in the petrol station. Which is great. That's a real benefit there. I was
Lisa: online in seconds.
David: Brilliant, brilliant. The benefit for handset manufacturers as well is that it's fewer moving parts in your phone. You know, you're not having to have that sim tray and waterproof all of that, and you've got extra package space inside for, hey, more battery.
Who's going to say no to that? But I do advise some caution, particularly if you are someone who takes your sim out if you drop your phone often like I seem to do, [00:35:00] then in my instance I actually had to go into my mobile operators store to have an e sim converted to a physical sim. I'm going to call it a p sim, uh, so that I could put that into my spare phone.
But another good thing is is security. We've heard a lot about SIM swap fraud over the years. And if you have your phone stolen, for example, the ability just to take, even though you might have a lock code on your phone, you take that SIM out and you don't have a SIM pin, then that would enable a fraudster to put that SIM into another phone and pretend to be you and all of the nasty fraud things that can happen.
So an eSIM can certainly help there.
Harry: Fantastic. And that's something that's only really available on, on new phones from the last three years, is it?
Adam: It's a bit longer than that. So Google Pixel series started in 2017, Apple iPhones 2018 onwards, and Samsung Galaxy 2020 onwards.
David: And depending upon where you buy your phone, if you buy an iPhone in the US, for example, that doesn't come with a SIM slot anymore.
From the [00:36:00] iPhone 14 onwards, that is eSIM only.
Adam: It's definitely something that the uptake's been relatively slow and it's been around since about 2016 and in the UK, the big four, plus Leica Mobile and GiffGaff, sometimes you have to get a physical sim first and then change it to an eSIM and all this kind of stuff, so it's not, the path to sort of the uptake has been a little bit difficult, even if it is, you know, easier and safer as we've discussed and cheaper sometimes.
In the UK at least it's been relatively slow. a bit slow.
David: Looking into my crystal ball, I don't think it's going to be too far into the future before we see moves that mobile device manufacturers have done elsewhere coming here to Europe and the UK as well, where we will no longer see that physical SIM slot and we have to move over to eSIM.
I don't think we're too far away from that.
Harry: We've got the kind of the latest which research now on the best mobile providers that is coming out when Adam?
Adam: It's on the 17th of April
Harry: so almost immediately after this podcast drops and that is on the which website is that right?
Adam: Yeah And it will be in May's magazine [00:37:00] and I can't tell you who the recommended providers and great value endorsed Networks are but they are all virtual networks and the big four did Average to bad.
But you'll have to subscribe or have the magazine to find out exactly who did what.
Harry: Fantastic. Any last advice here for Lisa with her poor, terrible mobile reception? I'm going to go through some of the old wives tales that I feel people do to try and get signal. Putting their phone against their head, putting it against windows, putting it in metal, like foil wrapped containers.
I've opened a window to try and get signal. All sorts of things. Is there anything better? any hacks for how to improve mobile signal.
David: So, a broadcaster who I worked with who was desperate for some mobile connection where he lived, he got one of those little 4G dongles and put it on a kite and on a windy day he was able to fly that kite, it got a 4G service, hello Connor if you're listening, and he was able then to have that [00:38:00] hotspot providing the rest of his home.
Genius. Yeah.
Lisa: Will which pay for a kite for me?
Harry: Uh, we can try a seagull or something like that. Oh, we've got loads of seagulls in
Lisa: Cardiff,
Harry: that'll work. Oh, fantastic. Well, please just send in your suggestions on how best to boost the signal at home. I've stood up ladders in, in barns to try and get some kind of line of sight with a, a mast in rural South West Wales, and it worked.
Thank you both of you for coming on. David, where can we find you out on the, uh, on socials?
David: If you have good coverage, then I'm on the internet. I'm at davidmcclellan. co. uk, find me on Twitter, find me on LinkedIn as well. I post all sorts of bits and bobs about mobile and other things on there. Fantastic.
Thank you very much, both of you.
Lisa: If you want to see that latest customer satisfaction survey for the mobile networks, head to the Which? website and take out a subscription.
Harry: And on the subject of mobile phones, we have loads of advice online All of it for free. And our [00:39:00] regular tech newsletter, which is also free, lands all of that information in your email inbox.
Check it out. We're going to pop a link to that on the sign up page in the description for today's show. Next time on Get Answers, we'll be talking about toilet roll. Do get in touch with your questions. We would love to hear them. podcasts at which. co. uk or go to our social media, we're at which. uk on all the main channels.
Lisa: And we'd love it if you could leave us a rating and a review. It's a really effective way to show support for our podcast as it helps us get recommended to new listeners.
Harry: Today's Get Answers was presented by me, Harry Kind, alongside the lovely Lisa Webb, produced by Robb Lily Jones and Adrian Bradley, recorded by Adrian and edited by Eric Breer.
And thanks again to our wonderful guests. David McClelland and Adam Snook. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
Lisa: Goodbye.