fivemack versus the confusopoly

[fivemack]

I am not entirely ready to trust mobile-phone salespeople on the subject of what tariff I should use for my phone; I have a dim suspicion that they are more interested in their commissions and in the course of action most profitable for their employer than in my best interest.

I have an iphone 3G, I bought it from the Apple Store for £159 with an eighteen-month contract provided through O2 seventeen months ago. I have been paying £35 a month since, which I think of as a £20 contract fee plus £15 paying off the implicit loan for the difference between what the iphone costs and what I paid for it.

I now have a paid-for iphone 3G. I've no desire at all to spend £400 on an iphone 3GS, whether as a lump sum or as an implicit loan. I would like the phone I currently have to continue working.

In the last nine months I've used 315MB of received cell data and 32MB of sent cell data, and in the phone's lifetime 12 hours of voice calls; I would expect to be able to get that level of cellular network access for a fiver a month at most, and be making my provider most of a fiver a month in pure profit by so doing. How do I go about doing so?

Comments

[numberland.livejournal.com]

Unlock and then PAYG. Alternatively if you phone O2 and say you are thinking of leaving them they may be able to give you a extremely good deal (e.g. £150 back instead of a new phone when signing up for a contract etc).

[naath.livejournal.com]

150 quid to carry on with a 40/month contract instead of going to the 20/month SIM only contract seems... perhaps foolish. Probably only for people who want the 150 pounds to buy a phone that O2 don't sell.