New Vodafone Price Plans

[3GScottishUser]

Indeed, the deals are pretty generous when you cut through to the detail. STC must be the very best add-on if your usage pattern includes lots of evening and weekend calling and Passport (free on all contracts) takes the pain out of mobile roaming in all EU countries and some beyond. Another great inclusion that will please many is the text bundles although its not so good that you can no longer use these proportionately for MMS.

The good thing about both Flext, the new Vodafone offerings and Orange's revamped animals deals are that the bundles are set for the enitre period of your contract, so no need to cut back on usage or buy extras after an inital period.

I think even 02 have a good deal at around £35 a month now which offers 750 X/Net Mins and 750 SMS plus a free 3G handset and a small data allowance + same cost video-calling. 02 also offer free off-peak calls from your home cell area which could eliminate charges from your home phone.

You really can get a lot for your £35 a month now from just about all the networks. I would be surprised if many people actually manage to use 750+ X/Net mins a month (that's 12.5 hours) or over 40 mins a day! The trick for the mobile telcos is to make you feel you have got a lot for you money whilst at the same time they know most customers wont actually use their full allowances.

T-Mobile still get my vote for simplicity with Flext. They have now applied the same logic to pre-pay with 'Everyone' and to the Mobile Internet with Web'N'Walk. The majors are now making their best deals available for about £30-35 a month and there appears to be little to separate them in terms of voice and text offerings at this critical price point. What is now making a difference is the 'extras' on offer. Orange provide free (up to) 8MB broadband for £30+ a month customers and that has to be factored into the value proposition especially if you have been paying BT or the like £25 a month for your home broadband service. 02 look like they will be following suit shortly after acquiring their own ISP in the UK.

Hopefully over the next few months all of the majors will revise their data offerings and compete directly with T-Mobile who appear to have stolen a march on the rest by offering a huge bundle (which they know most won't use) at a very attractive price.

Whilst price is a vital consideration so too is handset appeal, customer service, reliabilty and coverage. 02's recent results seem to prove that they have been very successful at identifying what UK customers want to buy and what they are prepared to pay for products.

There can be no denial that there is now very serious competition for mobile services in the UK and comparison with other countries costs now shows that the UK is no longer the overcharged island it used to be.