Three is fine. Been with them for years. I'm grandfathered into an old plan with enough data for my needs, tethering, unlimited calls and texts and free global roaming.
I only ever have signal problems in places the other networks also have problems.
This was certainly true for many years with their awful 4G network. But their 5G network is excellent if you are in an area with good coverage.
I’ve regularly seen over 800 Mbps in London, consistently faster than any of the other networks.
(On the other hand, I wouldn’t pick Three if you value good and consistent coverage. But if you are using it from a fixed location with a good 5G signal, it’s great)
> "If you're in a fixed location, you don't need to use a mobile network. Get wired internet connectivity"
Not always the best option in the UK.
5G mobile broadband is often both faster and cheaper than old-fashioned DSL, which is still all that's available in some areas/buildings. Even when you can get fibre to your home, it's often significantly more expensive and requires 12+ months contract commitment etc. Unlimited 5G data, on the other hand, can be got for around £20/month with no contract.
5G also tends to be more reliable. There’s a lot of redundancy built in to mobile networks that you don’t get with fibre.
Is that so? I didn't know. But I require internet connectivity anyway; being in a fixed location, I use a fixed connection. So I have FTTC. My VOIP-phone plugs into my router, so all I pay for is a local number, and maybe a local POTS connection at the other end. 5G may be cheap, but it's not as cheap as not buying 5G.
Unfortunately phone manufacturers (even Apple) are in bed with the carriers and still don't provide VoIP as a first-class option in 2022. VoIP is not as well integrated into the OS as normal cellular calls are, and you can't verify a VoIP number as outgoing number for iMessage/FaceTime either.
Oh, that kind of phone. Apple doesn't make "phones"; they make mobile devices.
We were speaking of fixed-location phone services. You don't need a mobile device to do fixed-location telephony; my VOIP-phone is made by Gigaset. It doesn't do iMessage/Face-whatsit, but neither do I.
I'm usually at home; I wouldn't need a mobile device, except that some commercial and government services refuse to believe I exist unless I can spit out a mobile number. I don't carry my device with me; it lives on my desk at home.
In terms of standard voice telephony, my Gigaset phone works better (and is much cheaper to use) than my mobile device. And the battery never goes flat.
The problem with a non-iMessage/FaceTime capable phone is that you sacrifice confidentiality and quality. Unless both sides are a good VoIP provider that interconnects with others over IP (which would ideally pass through RTP as-is and allow both sides to negotiate a good codec like Opus) - which is unlikely among the non-technical crowd - you're stuck with a fairly narrowband codec, where as FaceTime is something everyone has (and Android has its own options, including cross-platform ones).
Since LTE and IMS, all phones internally have a built-in SIP client already. If you're on LTE or using Wi-Fi calling, you're using SIP under the hood. There is no reason that client can't be opened to allow people to add arbitrary SIP accounts if it wasn't to protect the carriers' monopolies.
I picked three because they had free EU data roaming before it was the law. Now it is not the law anymore it seems that they no longer provide it to new customers (or those that made the mistake to "upgrade"), but so far I have been grandfathered in. I'll switch the moment is no longer the case.
I've been in many cities. I live in Manchester and go to the city centre very regularly (in fact, used to work smack bang in the middle). London, Berlin, Barcelona, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc etc etc I haven't ever had an issue making a phone call
Well you can get a ham radio license, spend $1500 on a basic radio and antenna and accessories, erect it in your garden, get on air and feel the joy of open communications all over the globe.
Or more realistically get blasted by people on contests or doing DX, hear about numerous health problems and waltz into casual racism, homophobia and sexism. The last bastion is CW (morse) where it's too much effort to be an asshole.
Well established UK Wholesale operator Simwood had not one but TWO very good goes at establishing an independent low-level UK network (or at least as low-level as is possible, they wanted to become as close as was humanly possible to a full MNO).
They ended up hitting obstacle after obstacle in the usual protection racket vicious circle between so-called regulator OFCOM and the incumbent operators. IIRC they encountered difficulties at every step, be it obtaining an independent allocation of mobile numbers or anything else.
In the end, they threw in the towel on the mobile project because they refused to be "just another" MVNO reselling someone else's rebranded service.
> Do you have more info on the Simwood attempts? I'd be interested to read more.
Publicly it could be tricky. It's been a while and I'd have to refresh my mind as to what bits were confidential and what was public. Simwood are generally fairly open about talking about most things, but mobile was a somewhat special project for obvious reasons.
There is, however this blog post from back at the time (2015/2016) when they were going for it though https://blog.simwood.com/2015/04/why-simwood-mobile/ ... which contains a couple of hints at what they were attempting and the associated difficulties.
There is also a 2015 presentation lurking on YouTube that includes coverage of, in the presenter's own words, the "bureaucratic, political and just plain incompetent roadblocks that we've experienced, and continue to experience" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN-DXL8fRsU
Thanks for the info - you mentioned a second attempt - is there any public info about it? I remember their first offering which was based on a company called Limitless which ended up going into administration, but I'm not aware of any other attempts?
I only ever have signal problems in places the other networks also have problems.