How to choose a mobile phone

By THIS IS MONEY
Updated:

 

Mobile phones have liberated millions from the frustration of trying to find public call boxes that have not been wrecked by vandals.

Overpriced and unfair contracts for mobiles are also fading into history. But making sense of mobile phone offers can be baffling, even for experienced users seeking a better deal.

There are four mobile networks - Vodafone, BT Cellnet, One2One and Orange - and many ways to buy air-time on these networks, with the choice of handset just one of the decisions customers must make.

Many of the UK's 14.9 million mobile users paid as little as £10 for their handsets. This was because they came as part of a deal committing users to the service for a year or more, and to paying monthly bills made up of airtime and call charges.

With newer deals, consumers can pay more like £50 to £150 for handsets, on top of monthly bills.

Chris Rowsell of the Consumers' Association says: 'All the companies are coming up with different ways to give value. For instance, some of their tariffs still include lots of minutes of call time, but some have cheaper airtime and some have cheaper call charges.

'That makes it difficult for customers to work out which is best for them.'

The Consumers' Association magazine Which? tackles the problem in its latest report on mobile phones by dividing consumers into social callers who phone mainly at evening and weekend, and daytime callers.

It then shows what the best tariff on each network would cost for various minutes of calls a month.

Rowsell believes there are two keys to finding a good deal. 'First, and this may seem hard for a new user, you should think about how you will use the phone,' he says.

'Will you be calling on weekdays or just evenings and weekends? Will you be calling local, national or competing mobile network numbers? How many minutes of calls do you expect to make each month?

'Having a clear idea of the answers will make it easier to eliminate unsuitable networks, contracts and tariffs.'

It is also vital to shop around. 'Go to several shops, including those handling all four networks, and contact some service providers direct. They often have cheaper tariffs than the networks themselves,' says Rowsell. Service providers are intermediary companies that sell airtime on behalf of Vodafone and Cellnet, either through shops or direct over the phone to potential customers who have seen advertisements. Singlepoint 4U is an example.

Orange and One2One are their own service providers. Their services are sold through specialist chains such as DX, Carphone Warehouse and The Link, and other High Street outlets. With Orange there is also a choice of buying through its own shops or web site.

Vodafone also has its own large chain of shops, as well as owning service providers Peoples Phone, Talkland, Astec and London Car Telephones. BT owns service provider and shop chain Martin Dawes as well as its own shops, and has an interest in DX and The Link.

All four networks still offer traditional subscription deals with monthly bills for calls and air-time, and renewable contracts. Following the intervention of the Office of Fair Trading, these are now free of anti-consumer clauses. But there other options designed to appeal to those who do not want to make a 12-month commitment or face unpredictable bills.

The runaway success is prepay, pioneered 18 months ago by Vodafone as Pay as you Talk and now available in some form on all the networks.

Prepay covers two million of Vodafone's 5.5 million customers. The customer buys the phone, connection to the network and with some schemes a set number of call credits. Further periods of calling time have to be bought in advance, either over the phone using credit or debit cards or by buying top-up cards from High Street retailers. All the networks have minimum spending levels.

The newer all-in-one upfront payment schemes, again available on all four networks, avoid the inconvenience of topping up.

With these schemes, customers buy a phone, an airtime contract - usually 12 months - and a set amount of call time each month.

Though customers receive monthly accounts, there is nothing more to pay while they keep within their limits. Calls that exceed monthly allowances have to be paid for monthly.

• The Carphone Warehouse booklets What Tariff? and A Simple Guide to Buying a Mobile Phone are free from its 180 branches or by calling 0800 424800. The Which? Website has regularly updated details of mobile phone tariffs,

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