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Cheapest way to get all network coverage with at least 3-5GB on each?

davegr

Pro Member
TL;DR - What is the cheapest way to get all network coverage, with at least 3-5GB of data on each network?

Living rurally, I can sometimes find myself without signal. I usually have dual SIMs, e.g right now I have Vodafone + Three, with the idea being that one SIM from a Cornerstone network and another from an MBNL network will provide the highest chance of coverage. This was all well and good until I recently found myself in a village where I had no signal on either. Checking coverage maps later revealed that only EE has coverage there.

I've also had a few other incidents leading to this question.

Yesterday for example, I was trying to pay for hospital parking. It required downloading an app and I had zero throughput on both Vodafone and Three.

Another time, with only a Three SIM, I found myself in the middle of nowhere, without signal and needing to download a new satnav app + UK map. Due to very low throughput, it took just short of an hour to perform this simple task, once I had found a hint of signal that is.

For those wondering why I was in this situation, my then satnav app (Sygic) had just updated before a long journey home from an unfamiliar place and this update had caused it to start telling me to use the first exit at every single roundabout...

My conclusions so far:

TalkMobile (Vodafone) 4GB @ £4.95 - my current main SIM
O2 ... ?
Three unlimited @ £7.50 (via Scancom) - my current business SIM/emergency backup
Spusu (EE) 5GB @ £4.50 (after 4 months at £1)

An alternative would be to use something like this: https://uk.simcorner.com/collections/europe-sim-card/products/europe-uk-travel-sim-card-6gb, preferably one that is available as an eSIM. One concern I have with this approach is that some networks use quite aggressive network steering when roaming and you could potentially be pushed onto a network with no or very low throughput.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions
Dave
 
The cheapest option will depend how often you are in this situation and the amount of data you will use during that situation. There are SIMs both monthly or a single allowance for a year. The latter type may be better if these situations are infrequent.

There is a lot on this forum regarding Multinetwork and Travel SIMs
There are UK centric eSIM solutions like Anywhere SIM
There are monthly cards like RWG https://www.rwgmobile.wales/webshop/multi-network-sims/1gb-multi-network-sim-£3-75-month/

Some SIMS are steered and some aren't. If steered it may continually seek that network first as its preference and not the alternatives. Even if does trigger to a higher signal there is no guarantee of throughput on that provider.

I travel a lot and I use Dual, Triple and even Quad SIM solutions and also use Speedify on the consuming device between it's SIM and WIFI (with its own SIM(s) on secondary solution) automatically. None of the providers cover 100% and so invariably the not spot you encounter is often replicated for the other providers. Or it is simply blocked due to the specific location in which case I often have to hoist a MIFI on a telescopic pole. Lots of examples in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall.

Being near any habitation and latching onto BT/EE or Sky (The Cloud) WIFI hotspots can also be quite successful.

The Multi network SIM would definitely be an advantage for remote car park where the only mobile signal is on the provider you don't have.

Your cheapest option is a main SIM that meets your general use case and then a Multinetwork SIM either as a Dual SIM or in a separate MIFI. Otherwise like me have a more complex solution providing WIFI in my vehicle.

I am going to try the RWG SIM myself to see how it behaves.
 
TL;DR - What is the cheapest way to get all network coverage, with at least 3-5GB of data on each network?

Living rurally, I can sometimes find myself without signal. I usually have dual SIMs, e.g right now I have Vodafone + Three, with the idea being that one SIM from a Cornerstone network and another from an MBNL network will provide the highest chance of coverage. This was all well and good until I recently found myself in a village where I had no signal on either. Checking coverage maps later revealed that only EE has coverage there.

I've also had a few other incidents leading to this question.

Yesterday for example, I was trying to pay for hospital parking. It required downloading an app and I had zero throughput on both Vodafone and Three.

Another time, with only a Three SIM, I found myself in the middle of nowhere, without signal and needing to download a new satnav app + UK map. Due to very low throughput, it took just short of an hour to perform this simple task, once I had found a hint of signal that is.

For those wondering why I was in this situation, my then satnav app (Sygic) had just updated before a long journey home from an unfamiliar place and this update had caused it to start telling me to use the first exit at every single roundabout...

My conclusions so far:

TalkMobile (Vodafone) 4GB @ £4.95 - my current main SIM
O2 ... ?
Three unlimited @ £7.50 (via Scancom) - my current business SIM/emergency backup
Spusu (EE) 5GB @ £4.50 (after 4 months at £1)

An alternative would be to use something like this: https://uk.simcorner.com/collections/europe-sim-card/products/europe-uk-travel-sim-card-6gb, preferably one that is available as an eSIM. One concern I have with this approach is that some networks use quite aggressive network steering when roaming and you could potentially be pushed onto a network with no or very low throughput.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions
Dave
I think eSIMs would be the better option but honestly we've had nothing but trouble with them.

You can go with EE directly for £4 for 5GB, it becomes 10GB if you have BT Broadband but it'll be subject to the £1.50/yr price rise. The offer technically requires you to be an ex-Plusnet customer but multiple forum members have had success with it (you may need a tracker blocker to place the order, I would also recommend not porting a number).

O2 I think you should be able to get about £8 for 32GB, some members have been offered £8.50 for unlimited data with having issues with VVM though so it might be worth going to retentions (I'm currently with O2 for £7.37 for unlimited data through a Virgin Mobile plan).

That Talkmobile SIM is probably the best deal for Vodafone and I doubt you could get much better for Three (I think you can get about 4GB for £5 on SMARTY but don't quote me on this).



As someone in a Vodafone host area, I personally just use the £7.37 unlimited O2 plan with Firsty (unlimited at 0.1mbps if you watch an ad every hour) which covers me for EE and Three (Vodafone is also supported but only works on 2G for me).

I rarely need to ever go off O2 though unless my signal sucks or it's just highly congested.
 
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The cheapest option will depend how often you are in this situation and the amount of data you will use during that situation. There are SIMs both monthly or a single allowance for a year. The latter type may be better if these situations are infrequent.

There is a lot on this forum regarding Multinetwork and Travel SIMs
There are UK centric eSIM solutions like Anywhere SIM
There are monthly cards like RWG https://www.rwgmobile.wales/webshop/multi-network-sims/1gb-multi-network-sim-£3-75-month/

Some SIMS are steered and some aren't. If steered it may continually seek that network first as its preference and not the alternatives. Even if does trigger to a higher signal there is no guarantee of throughput on that provider.

I travel a lot and I use Dual, Triple and even Quad SIM solutions and also use Speedify on the consuming device between it's SIM and WIFI (with its own SIM(s) on secondary solution) automatically. None of the providers cover 100% and so invariably the not spot you encounter is often replicated for the other providers. Or it is simply blocked due to the specific location in which case I often have to hoist a MIFI on a telescopic pole. Lots of examples in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall.

Being near any habitation and latching onto BT/EE or Sky (The Cloud) WIFI hotspots can also be quite successful.

The Multi network SIM would definitely be an advantage for remote car park where the only mobile signal is on the provider you don't have.

Your cheapest option is a main SIM that meets your general use case and then a Multinetwork SIM either as a Dual SIM or in a separate MIFI. Otherwise like me have a more complex solution providing WIFI in my vehicle.

I am going to try the RWG SIM myself to see how it behaves.
Thanks for your reply.

I should probably have been clearer and specified that I would like to be able to make calls as well, it is not only data which is important.
 
I often work in rural and very remote areas and for me the best combination has been EE / 1pmobile for my primary phone, Vodafone / Voxi for secondary phone and a Three sim as a last resort which is in another phone or dongle/mi-fi etc.
£10 month 1pmobile 25gb
£10 month Voxi 45gb on an offer
£3 month approximately for Three scancom prepay sim.
I will replace that Three sim with a Three esim and add that to my Voxi phone when I see a bargain.

I would say Three are the worse network for rural areas and very remote areas.

EE are good in remote areas because of the ESN network they are paid to provide, nearly always good 4g coverage, even in remote parts of Scotland and islands.

 
I think eSIMs would be the better option but honestly we've had nothing but trouble with them.
I've used quite a lot of them and I've only had one problem, where it wasn't made clear to me that there was a limit on the number of downloads (3 in this case).
You can go with EE directly for £4 for 5GB, it becomes 10GB if you have BT Broadband but it'll be subject to the £1.50/yr price rise. The offer technically requires you to be an ex-Plusnet customer but multiple forum members have had success with it (you may need a tracker blocker to place the order, I would also recommend not porting a number).
I'm hesitant to go via a route which may just get randomly revoked at any point.
O2 I think you should be able to get about £8 for 32GB, some members have been offered £8.50 for unlimited data with having issues with VVM though so it might be worth going to retentions (I'm currently with O2 for £7.37 for unlimited data through a Virgin Mobile plan).
Last night, O2's cheapest plan was £6.99 6GB of data. Today, their plans seem to have changed, though the £6.99 deal is still available via uSwitch and has enough data. I would just prefer under a fiver, especially for what is usually the worst network!
That Talkmobile SIM is probably the best deal for Vodafone and I doubt you could get much better for Three (I think you can get about 4GB for £5 on SMARTY but don't quote me on this).
I'm totally happy with the TalkMobile and Three deals to be honest.


As someone in a Vodafone host area, I personally just use the £7.37 unlimited O2 plan with Firsty (unlimited at 0.1mbps if you watch an ad every hour) which covers me for EE and Three (Vodafone is also supported but only works on 2G for me).
Interesting. What does such a low speed feel like for simple tasks these days? I assume it doesn't include any call allowance though?
I rarely need to ever go off O2 though unless my signal sucks or it's just highly congested.
You don't live rurally I guess?
 
I often work in rural and very remote areas and for me the best combination has been EE / 1pmobile for my primary phone, Vodafone / Voxi for secondary phone and a Three sim as a last resort which is in another phone or dongle/mi-fi etc.
£10 month 1pmobile 25gb
£10 month Voxi 45gb on an offer
£3 month approximately for Three scancom prepay sim.
I will replace that Three sim with a Three esim and add that to my Voxi phone when I see a bargain.

I would say Three are the worse network for rural areas and very remote areas.

EE are good in remote areas because of the ESN network they are paid to provide, nearly always good 4g coverage, even in remote parts of Scotland and islands.

I had forgotten about the ESN and of course that likely explains the local areas which only have EE coverage. It does not of course explain the areas that have coverage except for EE!

I find Three to be a mixed bag generally, sometimes with great service where others struggle.
 
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One concern I have with this approach is that some networks use quite aggressive network steering when roaming and you could potentially be pushed onto a network with no or very low throughput.
I think that steering only happens when the phone is on "auto", I've certainly forced mine onto carrier with multi network SIMs using the manual network search option, as long as the SIM is allowed on the network you select that should work.

I believe the MoGo (KPN-NL) esims have all networks, the BNE ones have O2/EE/3 (I think they're either Telnor or Play but not 100% on that)

Keysim do a sim where you can control the steering supposedly but it's quite expensive vs the travel sims so I've not (yet) tried it.

Edit: Whoops sorry I missed the bit about calls,

I think the new AAISP sip2sim SIM is o2 and EE?
 
I've used quite a lot of them and I've only had one problem, where it wasn't made clear to me that there was a limit on the number of downloads (3 in this case).

I'm hesitant to go via a route which may just get randomly revoked at any point.

Last night, O2's cheapest plan was £6.99 6GB of data. Today, their plans seem to have changed, though the £6.99 deal is still available via uSwitch and has enough data. I would just prefer under a fiver, especially for what is usually the worst network!

I'm totally happy with the TalkMobile and Three deals to be honest.

Interesting. What does such a low speed feel like for simple tasks these days? I assume it doesn't include any call allowance though?

You don't live rurally I guess?
You're not able to get O2 for less than £5, cheapest is whatever O2 or Giffgaff will offer. O2 only really has 3 MVNOs: Tesco, Giffgaff and Sky. Two of those are half or fully owned by Teléfonica. O2's deals can be really good though for higher data amounts, especially if you're a Virgin Media customer, we have two SIMs being the £7.37 unlimited data+mins+texts+75 countries roaming and £7.61 100GB data+unltdmins+unltdtexts+75 countries roaming.

The EE SIM hasn't been revoked for people who aren't actually ex-Plusnet customers and they're not gonna randomly cut you off a year from now for not being one. @Bubblesthefish6 uses one.

A low speed for simple tasks actually isn't the worst considering it's stable, it's definitely enough to send a WhatsApp message and the previous offering of 0.3mbps was enough to do a bit of gaming on. Doesn't include any calling allowance but it's free, what do you expect?

I don't live rurally but I am affected by the O2/Vodafone divide, struggled to even get a data connection earlier on B40+40. The O2 experience rurally is probably better in O2 host, but my limited experience in the South West is not great.
 
I think that steering only happens when the phone is on "auto", I've certainly forced mine onto carrier with multi network SIMs using the manual network search option, as long as the SIM is allowed on the network you select that should work.
I've definitely encountered SIMs where multiple networks are available but it's really difficult to connect to most of them and really easy to connect to the preferred.
I believe the MoGo (KPN-NL) esims have all networks, the BNE ones have O2/EE/3 (I think they're either Telnor or Play but not 100% on that)

Keysim do a sim where you can control the steering supposedly but it's quite expensive vs the travel sims so I've not (yet) tried it.
Thanks I'll check them out.
Edit: Whoops sorry I missed the bit about calls,

I think the new AAISP sip2sim SIM is o2 and EE?
That's one solution I'm considering but at that price, it would probably be better to get the roaming SIM I linked to earlier and have access to more networks!
 
I think that steering only happens when the phone is on "auto", I've certainly forced mine onto carrier with multi network SIMs using the manual network search option, as long as the SIM is allowed on the network you select that should work.

I believe the MoGo (KPN-NL) esims have all networks, the BNE ones have O2/EE/3 (I think they're either Telnor or Play but not 100% on that)

Keysim do a sim where you can control the steering supposedly but it's quite expensive vs the travel sims so I've not (yet) tried it.

Edit: Whoops sorry I missed the bit about calls,

I think the new AAISP sip2sim SIM is o2 and EE?
I have two Firsty SIMs and the KPN NL one has access to all networks, Vodafone is a bit dodgy for me but I think that's just an issue with my eSIM

The Play PL Firsty eSIM has access to O2, Vodafone and EE, so it's possibly Telnor that it uses
 
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You're not able to get O2 for less than £5, cheapest is whatever O2 or Giffgaff will offer. O2 only really has 3 MVNOs: Tesco, Giffgaff and Sky. Two of those are half or fully owned by Teléfonica. O2's deals can be really good though for higher data amounts, especially if you're a Virgin Media customer, we have two SIMs being the £7.37 unlimited data+mins+texts+75 countries roaming and £7.61 100GB data+unltdmins+unltdtexts+75 countries roaming.

The EE SIM hasn't been revoked for people who aren't actually ex-Plusnet customers and they're not gonna randomly cut you off a year from now for not being one. @Bubblesthefish6 uses one.
I think I'm right in thinking that Spusu has access to all EE bands. It also has 500 international minutes, so I would probably prefer it over EE direct.

A low speed for simple tasks actually isn't the worst considering it's stable, it's definitely enough to send a WhatsApp message and the previous offering of 0.3mbps was enough to do a bit of gaming on. Doesn't include any calling allowance but it's free, what do you expect?
I'm going to give this a try, hopefully it isn't as unreliable as Seeek!
I don't live rurally but I am affected by the O2/Vodafone divide, struggled to even get a data connection earlier on B40+40. The O2 experience rurally is probably better in O2 host, but my limited experience in the South West is not great.
How can I tell if I'm in an O2 host zone?
 
How can I tell if I'm in an O2 host zone?
1000063991.jpg

Here's our old favourite ancient rough guide davegr, featuring the great line of dooooom!😊
 
I'm going to give this a try, hopefully it isn't as unreliable as Seeek!
One thing I will note is that if you plan on actively using the data, make sure you're in a good signal area for your current operator before watching the ads, you don't get any grace period once your one hour period runs out to watch another ad (the app will notify you at 30 minutes left so you can top it back up to 60).

---

An easy way to check whether you're in an O2 host is to quickly open Cellmapper or NetMonster on your phone and share your eNB.
 
I have two Firsty SIMs and the KPN NL one has access to all networks, Vodafone is a bit dodgy for me but I think that's just an issue with my eSIM

The Play PL Firsty eSIM has access to O2, Vodafone and EE, so it's possibly Telnor that it uses

It can also depend on the Comms Plan the SIM has, as I know you can get KPN-NL SIMs that have access to all 4 networks in the UK and ones that don't (I Have an IOT one that doesn't have access to 3)
 
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One thing I will note is that if you plan on actively using the data, make sure you're in a good signal area for your current operator before watching the ads, you don't get any grace period once your one hour period runs out to watch another ad (the app will notify you at 30 minutes left so you can top it back up to 60).

---

An easy way to check whether you're in an O2 host is to quickly open Cellmapper or NetMonster on your phone and share your eNB.
Will that work on an iPhone?
 
Will that work on an iPhone?
Firsty should, Cellmapper or NetMonster won't lol

Open https://cellmapper.net and grant it your location and if you go to Vodafone or O2, you'll be able to get find your nearest mast and get the eNB number (for Vodafone, a 3-5 digit eNB is Vodafone host, 6 is O2 host; for O2, a 3-5 digit eNB or 6 digit beginning with 1 is Vodafone host, a 6 digit beginning with 5 is O2 host).
 
Firsty should, Cellmapper or NetMonster won't lol

Open https://cellmapper.net and grant it your location and if you go to Vodafone or O2, you'll be able to get find your nearest mast and get the eNB number (for Vodafone, a 3-5 digit eNB is Vodafone host, 6 is O2 host; for O2, a 3-5 digit eNB or 6 digit beginning with 1 is Vodafone host, a 6 digit beginning with 5 is O2 host).
I got a 4 digit eNB ID so if I've understood correctly, that makes me in a Vodafone zone.
 
I have two Firsty SIMs and the KPN NL one has access to all networks, Vodafone is a bit dodgy for me but I think that's just an issue with my eSIM

The Play PL Firsty eSIM has access to O2, Vodafone and EE, so it's possibly Telnor that it uses
I installed Firsty and all networks come up as Firsty when in manual selection mode! It does show KPN NL though.
 
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