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Looking at changing family plan (x5 sims) and Smarty seems to come up a lot as good value. Uses 3 and Vodafone networks. Any first hand experience? Wi-Fi calling is essential so need this to work reliably.
Cheers
yes, was on it for a couple of years, no problems at all. only swapped to lebara cos of the free roaming which smarty doesnt have. so that may be a good alternative to look into as when we (wife and i) joined the first 6 months were somethings like £1.50 p/m.
i dont believe im allowed to state i have a referral code so please dont contact me for one if you do decide on lebara 😉
My son's phone is on Smarty. £8 for 50Gb a month. Is absolutely fine for him, but personally I avoid 3 as I've had issues in the past with network under-capacity (lovely 4G/5G signal strength, no actual data). My son's plan seems to have free roaming, was happily using his data allowance in Croatia last week with no charge
i dont believe im allowed to state i have a referral code so please dont contact me for one if you do decide on lebara
Likewise for Smarty.
Used them for a couple of months when I was getting my broadband sorted out, but in a 4G router. No complaints, other than trying to run a house full of smart devices on a 4G connection (no fault of Smarty, I'm in a 5G blackspot).
Kids are both on Smarty. No problems. No reception at home (any network) so WiFi calling is well tested and not had an issue. Great value - about £10/month for some daft amount of data (120GB or something)
Roaming in EU has worked fine over the summer. No roaming for US/Canada though - but we'll get an eSim if they need that.
Great feedback, cheers. I know people are not allowed to mention referral codes so I will not suggest that anyone messages me with one for me to not use.
Might be a couple of weeks before I make the shift but I won't use the referral codes that you don't send via Pm when I don't move, or something like that!
We're all on Smarty - no issues at all.
Mrs lost her phone the other week and I cancelled the SIM and had a new one 24 hours later - really good service.
Way cheaper than what we were paying with Virgin - even on the SIM only deals.
Since they've merged the networks the coverage seems to have improved quite a bit too.
Used them for a couple of months when I was getting my broadband sorted out, but in a 4G router. No complaints, other than trying to run a house full of smart devices on a 4G connection (no fault of Smarty, I'm in a 5G blackspot).
I did exactly the same, whilst EE floundered about trying to sort my fttp. I found smarty 4g data was much more reliable than the EE, even when it showed similar signal strength. I think for my area it fell on 3 network.
Smarty was cheap and reliable and a 30 day non rolling contract option was perfect for me at the time.
I got a deal on iD mobile now and it's not bad, but really not as straightforward as with smarty.
This was a couple of years ago now, so it may have changed.
Been using Smarty for about 4 years now and generally very happy.
However, if you go anywhere very crowded (festival/event) you may find your signal is fine, but you have no data throughput, even when others around you do. I suspect this is down to the main carrier throttling the Smarty traffic in favour of theirs (like QOS on a WiFi network).
I'm on Voxi, youngest daughter on Smarty, eldest daughter on Lebara.
The Voxi international (US / India/ Singapore) roaming is the only reason I stay on Voxi really. Smarty/Lebara much more competitive day to day. Never heard of any issues with coverage from either daughter.
Voxi being Vodafone's cheaper offering, struggles at large events - but VF did the same in my experience (Murrayfield, Fringe etc)
Ive used smarty for 2 years, its better than any other network ive tried here.
I tried Lebara but had almost no signal from them
Have been with Smarty for a while, but thinking of moving away as regularly get the decent4/5g signal and no data issue. Happens where I live (which tbf is pretty poor for mobile coverage) but also had it on holiday in Cumbria recently, and have had it in big cities too.
It must be a network issue because it varies which of my phone and my wife's phone it affects, even when we are stood next to each other, and we have both had two different phones since moving to Smarty, so not a handset issue.
So that didn’t work out. Switched family of five over and instant issues with data. Shows four bars of 4G but no usable data at all. I couldn’t even use google maps in Edinburgh city centre today. My daughter is in Aberdeen and same issue. It’s woeful and completely unusable. Luckily only monthly contracts so starting the process of moving over to O2.
02 is dreadful these days. Massively oversubscribed network. Lousy data. Been with them on the work mobile for two years and super glad we've just jumped ship to EE which on average is far superior.
Look at 1p mobile which piggy backs off EE with no speed throttling. WiFi calling, roaming etc.. included.
They have good value unlimited data family plans too where every SIM after the first one is half price.
The other half and I have been with 1p for over a year now and it's been great.
I’ve been on smarty and VOXI and I’m now on Lebara. No issues and cheaper if you get on one of the deals.
So that didn’t work out. Switched family of five over and instant issues with data. Shows four bars of 4G but no usable data at all. I couldn’t even use google maps in Edinburgh city centre today. My daughter is in Aberdeen and same issue. It’s woeful and completely unusable. Luckily only monthly contracts so starting the process of moving over to O2.
As one of the people who recommended Smarty I am not 100% surprised at the symptoms, but I have only seen this at mass events like Goodwood Festival of Speed and Carfest. Did you change the date/carrier settings on the phone?
Smarty SIM only plan for about two years now and never had any issues other than in central Chichester which is an absolute network blackhile.
The Vodafone/Three merger is covered on this site https://www.vodafonethree.com/
It claims that "Within just two weeks, through the sharing of combined spectrum, Three and SMARTY customers will receive an improvement in 4G data speeds of up to 20%."
I am on Three and find data services unusable in my local town (Cheltenham) and places I have visited recently including Durham and Tenby. A 20% increase is not really going to help.
I did post a thread a couple of months ago asking about Three's coverage as I had suspected my handset was at fault but then had brilliant data when on holiday in Kefalonia. The common consensus was that Three is oversubscribed due to being cheaper than the other big networks.
I don't hold out much hope of the merger improving things but I will wait a few months to see if it does before switching to a provider that uses the EE network.
I have serious regret. I realise now that I was on a pretty good deal with BT. Been on the phone today to both Vodafone and EE and can't get a deal even close to what I had before. After reading comment above about o2 I had a look at their Trust Pilot reviews, wow! Currently on the phone trying to convince BT to take me back on the same deal as I had before.
I am another one who suffers with poor data speed or huge latency even tough the phone is showing a strong signal. I've often found vastly better service when roaming in Europe.
I was going to switch to someone else but then saw the Vodaphone and Three merger news. So far I don't see an improvement in service ... I'm going to give it an other month or so to see if gets any better if not I'll be trying someone else.
It's the backhaul from the mast to the internet that causes the issues, hence the data throttling. There are only 4 networks in the UK, Vodafone, O2, EE and 3, now down to 3. All the other providers piggyback off their networks. If you have a cheap package there's a reason, generally you're the first to get bandwidth for data throttled if there is too much demand on the local mast.
Commercial SIMs which don't get throttled are more like £5 a month with a data cap of 1Gb, and that's only if your running 7000 odd SIMs.
I've been on Three and then Smarty for years - they've always been good for me, admittedly mostly in urban areas, but I've never really noticed it being better or worse than others when out and about. In particular their WiFi Calling is excellent, quite important these days as 5G is generally a bit crap indoors. Particularly vs. eg O2 which MrsB was on but had a terrible experience at home, indoor coverage was crap, but the O2 WiFi calling was so random as to be worthless. Now on Smarty and fine at home.
Coverage, aka local geography, walls etc are far more likely than anything else to be the source of issues btw. It's theoretically possible to slice backhaul but I've never seen anyone do it at scale. Roaming can be poor though as for arcane ancient charging reasons traffic *still* gets backhauled to your home network before emerging onto the internet, not great if you're in Aus. (cf you'll usually find you can watch iplayer on your phone when abroad without a VPN). 5G has introduced the possibility for traffic to break out to the internet closer to the cell but afaik no one is implementing it generally.