At first glance, the figures from price comparison website moneysupermarket.com make for shocking reading. Extrapolating from a poll of just over 2,000 mobile users, moneysupermarket.com has calculated that the UK’s mobile networks are, in its words, “raking in” more than £10 billion per year in unused talk time and texts.
For sure, mobile networks are a soft target, and no doubt there are many people out there who could save money by going on a cheaper tariff. But I wonder how many users are already getting as good a deal as they can get. When I last switched network providers, I took a deal from 3 which gave me 500 minutes per month to any network for £15 a month, with an additional £5 a month for (mobile) Internet access. The deal came with an additional guarantee that I could not be moved on to a more expensive tariff as long as I remained with 3.
I got a feel for what the deal is costing 3 when I upgraded my phone just before Christmas. The sales assistant was not far short of desperate to bump me up to a £25 a month tariff that would offer me even more talk time. I didn’t take it, because I didn’t need it. And that’s my point really. I doubt whether I get anywhere near my 500 minutes talk time in any given month, so I am, in theory, contributing to this £10 billion that the networks are raking in. But what am I supposed to do, ring people up for the sake of it? And when the deal I’m on is as good as it is, what do I care if I don’t make full use of my allowance each month?
I’m not saying the logic used in the study is false, by any means, just that the topline figures, although they make for good headlines, don’t tell the whole story. Competition, and the very high rate of churn among mobile operators in the UK, have forced them to offer some very good deals. Where I do agree with moneysupermarket.com is in their advice to people to check the tariff they’re on. For all that’s said and written about mobile networks proactively contacting their customers to tell them when they could save money by moving up or down a tariff, I can safely say, in almost 20 years, shared between four UK mobile network operators, it’s never happened to me.
David Murphy
Editor 
