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EE UK Caps Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband Speeds to 25Mbps

Thursday, Mar 9th, 2023 (12:01 am) - Score 9,488
EE Mobile UK Sim Cards

Mobile network operator EE UK has quietly introduced an important change to their 4G based Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans, which means that customers who joined from 1st March 2023 will have their mobile broadband speeds capped at just 25Mbps – this is advertised as being “Superfast speeds“.

In a brief update to the operator’s small print, which was spotted by members of ISPreview’s Forum earlier this week, EE now states: “Customers joining EE on a Pay As You Go Plan from 1 March 2023 will have their speed capped at 25Mbps.”

The PAYG plans are all now being promoted as delivering “superfast speeds“, although it’s worth mentioning that Ofcom and the UK Government have, for a good few years now, all been using a figure of 30Mbps or greater to define a broadband connection as “superfast” (prior to that it was 24Mbps+). Anything less than 30Mbps and above 10Mbps today is instead considered to be “decent broadband“. Perhaps EE didn’t get the memo.

The 25Mbps cap is also the same one as already exists on EE’s social mobile tariff – EE Basics.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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Comments
35 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Dan says:

    EE don’t offer 5G on PAYG

    1. Avatar photo Phil says:

      This is correct! EE don’t offer 5G on their pay as you go.

  2. Avatar photo Gregowski says:

    Theres always 1pMobile 😉

    1. Avatar photo haha says:

      Best thing I ever did going with them – I also like the fact as it’s block usage there are no caps!

  3. Avatar photo Paulie says:

    What an embarrassment for them, no wonder they’re trying to keep it quiet! I hope this doesn’t also apply to 1p mobile not that I’m a user of their service.

    1. Avatar photo Class403 says:

      This change doesn’t apply to users of 1pMobile, it only affects EE PAYG users.

  4. Avatar photo Fabio Silva says:

    I left EE 4 years ago, and i cannot say i regret one bit. From super high prices, to representatives misleading customers into getting higher plans ( exactly what happened to me ) with prospects of early renewals, and then being refused to renew, and now they cap speeds. I hope every single pay as you go customer leave EE and move to different networks.

    1. Avatar photo Mikael Muntz says:

      Thanks for the information.

  5. Avatar photo anonymous says:

    Good old BT (who owns EE) – another cap introduced. They love limiting services don’t they.

  6. Avatar photo Mml says:

    In my mind, mobile broadband is something you would unpack while camping on the top of a hill somewhere, alongside your picnic on the grass. I would be more than happy to be getting 25Meg in this use case 🙂
    Use it as the main broadband source at home? Grow up.

    1. Avatar photo David MW0DCM says:

      Sorry to burst your “Mobile Broadband is only for camping and picnic” bubble but I know quite a few around the Rhondda Valleys that use Mobile Broadband because their FTTC is… Well inconsistent and just drops out, but BT advertise it’s 30 to 40Mbps when they get 10 to 15Mbps, and then suffer drops because it’s aluminium not copper that’s feeding the poles etc.
      EE in all honesty, I’ve never had a decent speed from them either when I lived in the Midlands or here in the Valleys, so it’s swings and roundabouts, mobile broadband works and isn’t just for picnics, especially in rural Wales!

    2. Avatar photo Uchiha says:

      think you might be the one that needs to “grow up”. First, nobody cares what you think about how it should be used. Who are you to decide how someone should use something they’ve paid for? Second, plenty of rural people (myself included) have got a choice of sub 10mbit Openreach (if available at all) or mobile broadband. So i’m very grateful that mobile BB is even an option at all. Secondly, the majority of the networks disagree with your thinking entirely, otherwise they wouldn’t be offering 5G routers and home-broadband plans.

      Moving on to adult conversations (Mml can disregard this part), EE aren’t doing themselves any favours here. I don’t imagine it will bode well for their numbers. Which in turn will probably lead to more customers leaving and increases in premiums for pay monthly users. I quite like EE in terms of speed and 4G+ / 5G it’s very good. But they already have hidden caps in the form of a FUP on their ‘unlimited’ plans. This coupled with the constant large increases in prices is going to push people elsewhere. I hope they can see this is a mistake.

    3. Avatar photo phil says:

      I already submitted complaint to ASA about EE speed capping on PAYG 25Meg is misleading called superfast as ofcom stated any mobile and broadband should be minimum of 30Meg or more for any superfast.

      Clearly EE are misleading, and a naughty company to hidden in the latest T&Cs change to be speed capping.

      For me, I will never go to BT or EE cos of they are pure greedy.

  7. Avatar photo NE555 says:

    Even at 25Mbps, you’ll use up 2GB of PAYG data in less than 11 minutes. I don’t see this as a major limitation for PAYG users.

  8. Avatar photo mike says:

    Does capping speeds actually help? Surely it’s better to have uncapped speeds as it means the phone can go back to idle faster and stop taking up valuable airtime.

    EE’s contracts are also ridiculous right now. I pay £20/month for 190GB and unlimited speeds. If I signed up as a new customer, I’d be paying £23/month for 125GB capped to 100Mbps. To get unlimited speeds I’d have to pay £31/month.

    1. Avatar photo Phil says:

      EE can sod off for all I care. Hope they will lose thousands of people’s now. Hope EE go bust for all I care

    2. Avatar photo spurple says:

      Yes it helps with airtime utilisation because speed caps are introduced by random drops (in UDP based applications) and tweaking window sizes in TCP applications. Most operating systems treat these cues as signs of congestion and slow their transmission accordingly, so this has the effect of freeing the airwaves.

      Of course you could build a modified device or application that ignores these cues and for a while, you can ignore the limits, but only on the transmit side, since that’s all you control. on the receive side, EE is the transmitter and can slow you down as much as they like. Also, if you do such a thing, you might trip monitoring systems and get yourself in trouble — or at the very least disconnected.

  9. Avatar photo Rob says:

    Is this also for ee mvno?

    1. Avatar photo Smythe says:

      No

  10. Avatar photo haha says:

    Great!- Just started work for EE PAYG as it only requires a laptop and headset.- and well now I am gonna get people whinging they have been capped!

  11. Avatar photo Michael V says:

    That’s harsh EE. Really bad.

  12. Avatar photo David says:

    Staying on topic of this article… Who’s using that much data on PAYG to even care about the speed limit? Data on PAYG costs a small fortune.

    PAYG is only used by old or non-tech savvy people with a basic non-smart phone that won’t need data. If you need to use data it’s better value to get a contract or a network that offers rolling monthly bundles e.g. Smarty or giffgaff.

    1. Avatar photo Iceman says:

      Not true. Some people find it difficult to get contract and besides Smarty and Giffgaff are both PAYG networks.

    2. Avatar photo David says:

      SMARTY don’t offer PAYG, you have to pay a month at a time. Giffgaff can do PAYG or monthly goodybag.

    3. Avatar photo Matt says:

      @David

      Unless you have a monthly bundle with EE on PAYG you can’t use data anyway and are restricted to texts and calls, so essentially the same as smarty, GiffGaff and Voxi

  13. Avatar photo Stan says:

    I use Smarty and get speeds of over 200mps contract free. EE. Why would anyone use them?
    I was with EE until January. They have gone from the best to the worst in just Two years.

    1. Avatar photo Paul Barrett says:

      Unfortunately Smarty uses the 3 network which is not as effective as EE.

      So ineffective was it I had to transfer to EE from 3 where I had been for 20 years.

      When my contract ends I will be obtaining anEE SIM only plan Unlimited everything.

      I won’t need a new phone.

      3 has been a victim of its own success in offering lots at very low price points

    2. Avatar photo Phil says:

      @Paul

      Smarty & Three are the fastest in UK. So, tell me if EE can beat that? Nope!

    3. Avatar photo Andrew says:

      I’ve got an ee SIM for work and three for personal use, the ee network destroys the three, both in coverage and most of the time in speed

    4. Avatar photo David says:

      I’m also in the camp of dis-satisfied Three customers who left them because their network was so unreliable, outages almost weekly, poor speeds, streaming services and file downloads would constantly lose connection. Things are so bad on Three’s network our company IT even warns staff not to use them for work.

      I’m now a mostly satisfied EE customer (apart from their high prices) although I do keep a backup Giffgaff SIM for the rare occasion in city centre where EE shows full signal strength yet nothing will connect.

      Vodafone and O2 not available at all at home even though their coverage checkers claim excellent 4G and 5G indoors.

  14. Avatar photo spurple says:

    Being on PAYG is kind of reckless on a provider like EE because it costs so much more than being on a contract. Unless you’re using your sim as a home broadband solution, you won’t notice the effect of this change for typical mobile phone use cases, but shop around for cheaper deals.

  15. Avatar photo Stephen Wakeman says:

    There are good points on both side of this argument. I agree that one the one hand, users on PAYG are far less likely to be using their mobile contract as the sole or primary source of connectivity. If it’s just a phone using the connection, the vast majority of customers aren’t going to be affected by this or likely to notice their speeds are capped.

    I’m on EE contract with unlimited data uncapped speed. At home on 5G I get around 450Mb download and 45Mb upload but don’t need this as I have fast home broadband.

    When I’m holidaying in the UK I’ve yet to stay anywhere where I get a more than 75Mb (even when I’m on 5G). This isn’t a problem, but I’m mentioning it for the context of mobile users. What usage cases that PAYG – or any mobile customers in fact – regularly require a consistent connection of over 25Mb right now? You don’t need that for most of the things people are doing with their phones.

    Boasts about 500Mb and gigabit mobile downloads are just that. Almost nobody will have an actual requirement for that speed with current phone tech.

  16. Avatar photo tech3475 says:

    Anyone here actually use 1pmobile?

    I’m considering switching to them from EE PAYG because of the £15 50GB plan and 5G.

    1. Avatar photo Phil says:

      Yes I use 1p mobile for about 4 months now. They are great. They do have 200GB Data, Unlimited Calls, Unlimited Texts for £20 a month with 4G/5G if your ee network support 5G it will be 5G otherwise my 1p mobile doesn’t have 5G in my area yet but using 4G+ with speed of 200Meg down and 80Meg up (that’s was overnight) but daytime getting speed of 50-65Meg down and 30Meg up.

  17. Avatar photo Smith says:

    EE have updated their Pay As You Go pack allowances overnight, and introduced a 25Mbps max speed.

Comments are closed

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