BT Mobile operates as a sister service to EE, piggybacking on EEs 4G and 5G network, but offering lower prices and a range of features designed to appeal to families. A few years ago, it was one of the best networks for low-cost handset deals and cut-price SIM-only contracts, but on our last inspection, we found that the prices weren’t so compelling that rivals were beginning to beat BT on value. Yet BT mobile still makes a lot of sense if you use BT for broadband and has some fantastic family features that you won’t find on any other network.
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BT Mobile review: What do you get?
What do we mean? Well, if you want to buy an iPhone 11 on BT mobile as a non-BT broadband subscriber the costs start at £50/mth with £30 upfront. With 30GB over a 24-month period, you’re looking at £53 plus £10 upfront, which works out at £1,282 over the whole term. Buy the mid-range Samsung Galaxy A51, and prices start at £27/mth. Opt for a 15 GB data allowance and this goes up to £30/mth, for a total £720 over two years.
If you are BT subscriber, however, you get an instant £5 discount on your monthly contract. That’s enough to take the iPhone 11 down to £48/mth with 30GB, for a total cost of £1,162. With the A51, the monthly cost drops from £30/mth to £25/mth for a total cost of £600. BT broadband subscribers can even get the A51 on an unlimited data package for just £29/mth, giving you a cracking mid-range phone plus two years’ worth of all-you-can-eat data for under £700. You’ll struggle to match about elsewhere, but it only applies if you’re a BT subscriber.
Browse phone contracts now at BT Mobile
As for SIM-only deals, plans range from a £10 plan for unlimited texts and minutes plus 1GB of data to a £25 plan with 100GB of data. However, the most value-packed plans involve an 18-month contract, so you have to be prepared for a longer-term commitment. By themselves, these deals don’t sound that exciting, but if you are an existing BT customer, the £5 discount makes a massive difference. It’s enough to put BT’s 10GB deal on the footing with Giffgaff, Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile, while 100GB for £25 seems pretty reasonable.
Browse SIM-only plans now at BT Mobile
BT Mobile SIM-only plans – 4G/5G |
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| Data plan | Monthly fee | Monthly fee (BT Broadband customer) | Calls/texts |
| 1GB (18 months) | £10 | £5 | Unlimited |
| 1GB (12 months) | £12 | £7 | Unlimited |
| 6GB (12 months) | £14 | £9 | Unlimited |
| 10GB (12 months) | £17 | £12 | Unlimited |
| 30GB (12 months) | £20 | £15 | Unlimited |
| 50GB (18 months) | £20 | £15 | Unlimited |
| 100GB (18 months) | £25 | £20 | Unlimited |
| 100GB (12 months) | £30 | £25 | Unlimited |
It makes even more sense to go for BT if you have BT fibre and want a 5G mobile network. BT Halo gives you 5G on top of one of its superfast fibre broadband service from just £55.70 a month, all-in. At the time of writing BT isn’t selling any 5G handsets or SIM-only plans, but if you’re looking for a fast connection both inside and outside the home, then BT Halo could well work out cheaper than taking your 5G and fibre from different providers.
BT tends to run some good offers, which might sway you one way or the other. You can usually get free BT sport on your mobile, while right now it’s offering six months free of Apple TV with certain phones.
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BT Mobile review: Family plans
All this applies if you’re just buying one SIM, but if you’re taking one for you, one for your spouse or partner and one for the kids, BT’s Family Plans start to make more sense. These come in 1GB to 100GB flavours and – assuming four phones in the household – you could see the prices for 10GB come down from £17 to £11 per phone. Each SIM has its own allowances, so you don’t need to worry about one family member sucking up the month’s allowance, and the bill payer can control spending caps for each SIM. You can see the maximum monthly breakdown per plan in the table below. Just bear in mind that you’ll knock an extra £5 off the monthly price if you’re a BT Broadband customer.
| Data plan | 2x SIM | 3x SIM | 4x SIM | 5x SIM |
| 1GB | £17.00 | £22.00 | £27.00 | £32.00 |
| 6GB | £21.00 | £28.00 | £35.00 | £42.00 |
| 10GB | £26.00 | £35.00 | £44.00 | £53.00 |
| 30GB | £32.00 | £44.00 | £56.00 | £68.00 |
| 100GB | £50.00 | £70.00 | £90.00 | £110.00 |
Browse Family plans now at BT Mobile
It’s a flexible way of working, too. While the primary plan has to have a minimum 12-month contract, the additional SIMs only have 30-day terms. Not everyone has to have the same plan, and you can change the make-up at a month’s notice. You can even change the primary plan without extending the length of the contract, though you can only downgrade a plan once in a 12-month contract. With just the one bill and primary plan to deal with, it’s a lot easier to track and control your family’s mobile spending.
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BT Mobile review: Coverage and connection speeds
As we said, BT mobile is effectively a virtual network running on top of EE, which is good news for both as EE tops RootMetrics’ UK wide mobile network performance tables for the seventh year running, winning across six of seven categories. EE has the highest aggregate media download speed of any network at 42.6Mbit/sec; 22Mbits/sec ahead of the nearest competitor, Vodafone. EE also placed first the speed and reliability in more metropolitan areas than its competitors.
EE does have some advantages over its stablemate, including a top 4G speed of 90Mbits/sec, where BT is limited to 60Mbits/sec. That said, you can still expect excellent performance almost anywhere with BT.
It helps that EEs coverage is impressive with only a few spots in coastal rural areas where you are limited to a 3G connection, and even fewer spots where you’ll get no coverage at all. EE also has a growing 5G presence ran most of the U.K.’s biggest cities and RootMetrics’ most recent 5G research found that EE was the only operator across all 16 cities where it tested, and also had the fastest 4G speeds with median 5G download speeds ranging from 103.9 Mbits/sec to 145.9Mbits/sec. That’s good news for potential BT Halo customers.
Browse phone contracts now at BT Mobile
BT Mobile review: Roaming
Like all UK providers, BT Mobile currently allows you to use your calls, texts and data allowances for free in the 47 European destinations covered by its Roam Like Home tariff, and doesn’t plan to change this once the Brexit transition period ends (though surcharges apply when you use over 15GB in a single monthly billing cycle). Outside your allowance, you’re looking at 29.1p and 35p per minute making calls, 10p to 12p per message and 8.3p to 10p per MB, depending on your location.
Roaming gets a whole lot more expensive outside the EU, with prices reaching £1.40 to make a call, £1.25 to receive a call, 40p per text and a whopping £5 per MB in many territories, including the US, Thailand and Australia. You can cut costs with a Travel Data Pass add-on, which gives you a 500MB daily allowance every 24 hours for £6 per day in a further 12 countries, including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. That’s not a bad deal, but some providers cover these countries free within a selection offer plans.
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BT Mobile review: Other services and spending caps
BT Mobile now offers Wi-Fi calling feature, where you can make and take calls over Wi-Fi in places where you can’t get a decent mobile signal. It only works on specific iOS and Android phones, but it’s useful in poor signal areas. What’s more, BT Mobile also gives you free access to BT’s network of five million free UK Wi-Fi hotspots, with another 13 million abroad. This could give you better high-speed access in some locations and also help you get away with a lower monthly data allowance.
BT Mobile offers spending caps, with the default cap being £40, though a safeguard kicks in if you run up data charges of more than £35 while abroad. You can set your own cap, starting at £0, online.
BT Mobile review: Customer satisfaction
BT Mobile has improved customer satisfaction since a dismal Ofcom report last year. Admittedly the bar is low; in the 2019 report it had 29 Ofcom complaints per 100,000 customers while in this year’s report it just has 21. That’s still more than every other provider bar Vodafone and Virgin Mobile, so isn’t time for BT to start celebrating just yet. Credit where credit’s due though, BT’s average call waiting times are actually amongst the lowest.
Browse phone contracts now at BT Mobile
BT Mobile review: Verdict
Whether BT Mobile is right for you really depends on whether you already use BT for your broadband or fibre, because that £5 discount makes a big difference across BT’s deals and plans, particularly if you’re signing up the family. If you already use BT’s services, then you should definitely consider looking at BT; it’s well priced and based on the speediest host network around. If you don’t, however, there are better and cheaper options out there, even if they don’t offer BT’s excellent family plans.
The post BT Mobile review: Family friendly and a bargain for BT customers appeared first on abangtech.
source https://abangtech.com/bt-mobile-review-family-friendly-and-a-bargain-for-bt-customers/
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