I have been on GG for over 3 years, I have just been upgraded to 4G at no extra cost.

It piggy backs O2 so whatever coverage they have for your area is what you will get with GG.

The best part is that you are NOT tied to a contract, you can swap goody bags each / every month.

When it comes to handsets, it is either good or bad depending on how you want to look at it - Handset choice is not as good as the major shops, and as i compared a Sony Z4 price that my wife did when she took a contract with O2. To buy using O2 worked out to approx £100 more than if you had bought new and unlocked from internet.

Given the cost of handsets, i personally prefer not to take ones from Shops as my last 3 handsets have all been new, unlocked and cheaper than if i had taken a contract ( yes it was a large initial outlay, but was able to recover most of the cost selling the old phone on e-bay.

All i will say about those who have complained about GG, would have same issues with O2, and probably other providers till one was found to give suitable coverage.

My advice is if you have good O2 coverage then GG will be ok as i have found - SWMBO on O2, I am on GG

I don't think this is completely true.

I noticed my GG service deteriorating a couple of years ago and upon googling the issues, there are very strong suspiscions that GG users (and presumably other O2 virtual mobile operators like Tesco) are being throttled on 3G at the expense of actual O2 users. This seems to have coincided with the development and roll out of 4G. I am still on 3G and often find the signal patchy. My wife is on a 4G GG service and I cannot say I am wowed by its performance either. The annoying issue where GG send her texts twice to other GG users (me) because she is on 4G has re-surfaced again too.

I have stuck with GG precisely because of that no strings/no commitment basis but after 4 years I am like an abused partner. Saying I can leave at anytime if I want to whilst my partner is abusing me with a reducing service and significantly higher cost.

I could do with a new phone but I can't be doing with paying hundreds of pounds for something decent to replace my Nexus4.

Edited 6 November, 201510 yr by 'daiking'

Well... all I'm going to say is that when I'm stood next to a friend who is on O2 and they only have Edge (2G) while I have 4G... I know which I'd choose!

Well... all I'm going to say is that when I'm stood next to a friend who is on O2 and they only have Edge (2G) while I have 4G... I know which I'd choose!

 

to be hinest that can happen in reverse just as many places. Each network has strong areas and weak areas. I have a work phone with Vodafone and a personal one with Three. Sometimes they are both good in the one location but more often than not one has a good signal while the other does not. That's how radios work (and these are just radios)

^^^^ Same here, my missus can get all uptight about the signal strength she gets. We both had identical phones, on 4G with Tesco (02) at the same location. I say mine works fine.

 

Last week I bought a new phone (I dropped the other one, doh!) it's a better, supa dupa faster one than hers, same network so just changed sims over. Sat together yesterday hers picked up the signal faster than mine, we eventually got there.

I just ran speedtest on my phone, full H+ signal.

 

36.3KB  maximum down (it dropped to 12 at one point), and  88KB up.

 

2nd test 48.8 down and 174.9 up.

 

3rd test 37.3 down and 289.2 up.

 

The speeds vary, but the differential is the same every time, download speeds are being throttled to death.

 

I am seriously considering Three again, especially when I next change my phone, as I will be going for a 4G to tether my netbook and tablet to when I am out/on holiday.

Wow. That's shocking! Like I say I used to get awful speeds like that on EE (T-Mobile plan) and there was some serious throttling going on.

 

I've just switch to 3G on my phone (as I have 4G here) and with 1 bar in the house I get this;

 

 

And then on 1 bar of 4G in the house;

 

 

And I'm a heavy data user and I'm not throttled (usage since 7th October which is my billing date).

 

Edited 7 November, 201510 yr by Phil-E

I hardly use data at all - and with speeds like those, you can see why!! My goodybag allows me 1GB, but I could leave the phone downloading all month and not get half of it.

Well... all I'm going to say is that when I'm stood next to a friend who is on O2 and they only have Edge (2G) while I have 4G... I know which I'd choose!

I've nothing against 3, it's not what this about. If you think O2 is bad, GG has become tragic.

I'm looking for a new phone and would happily change network now. I'm just not keen on getting a handset via 3 though. Are they still chronically bad for locking down their handsets to prevent use on other networks?

Edited 7 November, 201510 yr by 'daiking'

I've nothing against 3, it's not what this about. If you think O2 is bad, GG has become tragic.

I'm looking for a new phone and would happily change network now. I'm just not keen on getting a handset via 3 though. Are they still chronically bad for locking down their handsets to prevent use on other networks?

 

That is your Opinion about GG and you could say the same about other 3rd part SIM providers that utilise the O2 network.

 

I have had no issues with them & get the same 3G & 4G signal and speeds as SWMBO does on O2.

My work was on Vodafone which for me was awful but quite a few of my work colleagues in other parts of the country were fine, now the reverse is true having switched to O2.

 

I also have access to get all the same O2 priority moments as she does, had some decent freebees.

UPDATE, I was over in Worcester earlier -at a friends house, I had some time to spare on the throne and ran a speed test.

 

3 bars and H+

 

104.7KB DL and 32KB UL

 

Something is completely screwed on the Malvern transmitters, as I have got the same speeds I posted earlier from all over the Malvern area

 

107KB = ~0.9Mbps, which is still not great, but it is a damned sight better than Malvern!!

 

I have lodged a service complaint with O2, lets see if they do anything.

Edited 7 November, 201510 yr by GentleGiant

I'm looking for a new phone and would happily change network now. I'm just not keen on getting a handset via 3 though. Are they still chronically bad for locking down their handsets to prevent use on other networks?

 

I'm not sure to be honest. The last phone I bought from them was a HTC Desire and it was completely unlocked.

 

Since then I have decided it's easier and cheaper to just buy phones cheaper from ebay etc then just have a SIM only contract.

All 3 phones are unlocked.

 

Previously ( circa 18 months ago ) you had to fill in a painless web form if yours was locked to unlock it.

UPDATE, I was over in Worcester earlier -at a friends house, I had some time to spare on the throne and ran a speed test.

 

3 bars and H+

 

104.7KB DL and 32KB UL

 

Something is completely screwed on the Malvern transmitters, as I have got the same speeds I posted earlier from all over the Malvern area

 

107KB = ~0.9Mbps, which is still not great, but it is a damned sight better than Malvern!!

 

I have lodged a service complaint with O2, lets see if they do anything.

 

O2 claim there is nothing wrong.

O2 claim there is nothing wrong.

 

Nothing wrong!? So they think 107kb/s is ok then? Probably get out of that one as they make no promises as to the speeds you can expect to get unlike landline broadband providers.

 

I mean seriously... what can you do with 107kb/s!?

Nothing wrong!? So they think 107kb/s is ok then? Probably get out of that one as they make no promises as to the speeds you can expect to get unlike landline broadband providers.

 

I mean seriously... what can you do with 107kb/s!?

 

You didn't use the internet in the 90s or early 2000s then?! I can remember 512k Blueyonder cable being awesome after I moved from rural Wales and years of dialup!

You didn't use the internet in the 90s or early 2000s then?! I can remember 512k Blueyonder cable being awesome after I moved from rural Wales and years of dialup!

Still quicker than here then

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You didn't use the internet in the 90s or early 2000s then?! I can remember 512k Blueyonder cable being awesome after I moved from rural Wales and years of dialup!

 

Lol. Yes I did. I had dialup then got 512k broadband.

 

But today having a 100kb/s internet connection is just terrible.

Phil- I'm on a 3 dongle and get 6 MB- far in advance of what we used to get from BT etc. 512- I can remember the days of 14KB.Smoke seemed faster.

No I never had the (dis)pleasure of anything slower than 56k dial-up. That was painful enough.

 

It's amazing really how far we've come. If I'm at my Dad's house in Bridlington (where they have also introduced 4G) I get between 20 and 40mb/s which is much faster than his ADSL connection. That always seems to annoy him!

Nothing wrong!? So they think 107kb/s is ok then? Probably get out of that one as they make no promises as to the speeds you can expect to get unlike landline broadband providers.

 

I mean seriously... what can you do with 107kb/s!?

 

Thats big B, so multiply by eight - 107KB = ~ 0.9Mbps

 

If I could get that in Malvern I wouldnt be too unhappy, I keep big downloads for my WiFi connection anyway, but the sub 40KB connection I get locally makes it impossible to do anything, websites time out and need refreshing 4-5 times and take several minutes just to load the front page.

Phil- I'm on a 3 dongle and get 6 MB- far in advance of what we used to get from BT etc. 512- I can remember the days of 14KB.Smoke seemed faster.

 

I remember finding an abandoned Quad 600baud modem at work, and dreaming of being able to bond 4 telephone lines together to make 2400baud.

I remember finding an abandoned Quad 600baud modem at work, and dreaming of being able to bond 4 telephone lines together to make 2400baud.

 

You sir, are very very old.

You sir, are very very old.

 Yeah, My first two years of Computer Studies, we programmed using "Mark Sense" cards that were sent to the local collage to run on their mainframe. So it was a week before we found out if we had made a mistake in the program, or failed to mark the cards correctly

 

(Mark Sense" cards were like cardboard lotto sheets, you had to carefully scratch a line in various boxes using EXACTLY the right grade pencil - one car = one instruction, so a program ran to dozens - or hundreds of cards.)