Mobile phone network recommendation

Not often that we can give positive recommendations nowadays, but when one comes along, it is worth sharing.

Just over a week ago, I changed my car and the new car has a sat-nav unit that shows you live traffic information as you travel (quite handy when you live and work in SW London!), but to get that information the car needs to have a mobile phone SIM card installed into it.

Not wanting to spend much, if anything on this really, I initially looked at pay-as-you-go style cards, but all of the ones I looked at wanted to be loaded with a minimum of £10 which would then expire after 30-days and you would be back to square one. I then looked at some SIM only deals, and they averaged around £8-£10 a month for a basic 1Gb or 2GB plan.

Out in Staines last Sunday, we spoke to the guy at the Sky stand and as we currently have Sky (I say currently, as it is on my hit list to go!), he did us a deal at £4.50 a month for a 1Gb plan (normally £7 if you don't have Sky). Fair enough, not going to get much cheaper than that. Better still, any unused data each month would simply roll over to the next month and build up, so in theory all the quiet times would build up a pool of unused data that I then wouldn't have to worry when I went on longer journeys.

The card arrived, and was duly activated and put into the car - nothing, wouldn't work.

I contacted Sky help team via Twitter the other evening to ask for advice, only for them to initially say that their SIM wouldn't work in car units and were designed for phones only. So, I asked how to cancel, as the contract had been mis-sold, with the guy selling it being fully aware of the intended use (numerous times!)

Being late in the evening, things were put on ice (or so I thought) as customer services had closed for the night (fair enough). Around 10pm, I got a message through from Sky saying that they had been speaking with some of their tech guys and had a suggestion to try. The problem lay with the fact that the SIM was not in a phone and therefore couldn't receive the text message with the relevant settings it needed to make it work.

Between us, we worked out how to manually put in the information required (essentially the network ID and Access Point Name), and I have fed back the results to Sky with photos to allow them to help others in future.

But, the stand out thing here was that something that was on hold overnight, someone took the initiative to go and try to resolve, and achieved that resolution, and all for a £4.50 a month contract. Now that is pretty good service.

So, if you need a SIM only deal for your mobile phone (or indeed if you need a new phone) that isn't going to cost the earth, has endless free texts, tons of minutes and data rollover...... give Sky a try!

 

Hi Ricky,

That one wouldn't work for me as the system uses no voice or SMS, purely data and that trips up most PAYG ones as they require that SMS/voice use once within the specified period to keep the thing running. It is a bit of an odd situation though as there must be more than just JLR vehicles that have a system like this.

 

To some degree, I suppose they are, but in the couple of days I have been using it I have been surprised at how accurate it is and how handy it is - it is not so much that the system re-routes you, but rather that you can see on the screen what the traffic levels are like on the road you are on and roads around you so if you know the area you can pick which way you want to go. The data use seems to be relatively small, so the 1Gb contract I have should more than cover it. Whether I will get that £4.50 back in saved diesel at any point remains to be seen, but I suppose that it could be argued that it saves you money by saving time if you are not late for work etc.

 

Looking at the display, it appears to be based on Google data - if you go to Google maps, click on the bars on the left and select traffic, you will see coloured lines on the various roads in your area (or anywhere really). The data is collected from phones and satnav units as to how quickly (or slowly) they move along the roads, coupled with manual reports from traffic authorities and private users (road closures and so on).

There is also a website called one.network which councils and transport authorities feed into regarding any roadworks or disruptions in their area (again, this appears to be linked to Google). All of this is definitely 'big data' but it seems to work really quite well.

 

It is a huge combination of GPS, GPRS, cell triangulation data all linked up with the various roadworks and street control centres (LSTCC in London for example). Scary when you think about it, but then really handy at times too.

My journey home of an evening takes around 20 minutes. If things on the roads go horribly wrong and I get stuck in it, that can be 2½ hours, so the cost of the additional fuel alone is not insignificant. Besides, if I avoid a problem I might make another area a little bit busier, but that is still better than me becoming part of the problem.

 

The system you're describing is almost certainly 'Waze'. It was developed by a small Israeli company and rolled out about 2006/7 as a freebie service in Israel (think they called it Freemap Israel but changed it later to Waze). This was described to me by our driver and guide (two friends, one Jewish and one Moslem) when we were touring Israel.

It gives real time reports automatically (unless you turn it off) of where the vehicles are. This shows immediate information of the build up of traffic and allows you to find another way. Our driver used it to avoid the sudden build up of traffic around Tel Avbiv when we were on our way to Jerusalem. I think it's now connected to Googles mapping system.

It was sold for a rather large sum to Google and the small staff of the original company received about £1 million each. I don't know how much the owner got.

You can probably look it up on Google

I liked this play on words

 

It is similar to Waze, and in all likelihood linked somewhere in the background, however it does differ quite significantly to Waze.
In many respects, Waze is better - however, as it runs on your phone, and for most folks is on a tiny wee screen it does have drawbacks.

 

A few points there @Mike Allen - if Google takes over your computer when you switch it on, your computer is either incorrectly set up or it has some sort of very strange virus. Generally speaking, it is Microsoft that takes over your computer, not Google - Google only gets involved at your choice, usually by you chosing their browser and/or search engine.

To some degree, yes it is big brother watching you - but equally, it is us watching big brother; there is clearly a huge demand for this type of information as companies such as City Mapper, Waze and so on are doing very well out of it.

Your reference to the police is a very interesting one, as this technology generally helps police - in the first instance, it makes it easier to track the last movements of a missing person (or at least their phone) with a fairly high degree of accuracy; relating to the topic at hand, satnav units, the traffic data is shared very rapidly indeed, so if there is an incident where a road has been closed for whatever reason (usually a stabbing in London!) that information is circulated around phones and satnav units keeping people away from the problem area - not only does this help minimise the huge traffic jams, but it also stops officers getting verbally induced earache by people shouting at them because they are angry that the road has been closed. Finally, it has the ability to transmit speed limit information continually, and in conjunction with other technology such as traffic sign recognition it can give the driver overspeed warnings, or even remind them they are no on an two way road and not a motorway.

Every mobile phone is a transmission device and receiving advice (that by their nature is how they work), and satnav units are no different in that respect with the exception that they handle data only (no voice, or saucy text messages) - and all mobile devices have the relevant compliance in terms of the radio signals used, and are covered under the malicious communications act.

In the instance I am talking about, Google appear to have provided the map and map data (could just as easily have been Bing or Ordinance Survey), the traffic information appears to be a mix of their data, one.network, HERE and of course for the software Jaguar themselves must have had a say. This is not new technology (not by a long stretch), it has merely reached the point where it has become accessible to a lot more people at a reasonable cost.

Oh, and if you dislike Google, you might want to avoid YouTube as they own that and know everything you watch and offer you new suggestions and advertising based upon that.