Daniel Pallett

Take this as an example. Suppose you want to get the Samsung Galaxy Ace (S5830) on a contract. Lets look at what the mobile phone network 3 is offering.

For £25 a month on a 24 month contract you get the phone free. Inclusive in the Text 500 plan are 500 minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB Internet data. That works out over the two years as £600.

Now consider this alternative. You can buy the phone outright on PAYG for £199.99. Suppose you then scrap the PAYG SIM-card, and instead go with one of 3’s SIM Only plans. Now you can’t get exactly the same inclusive allowances as the Text 500 plan offers, but you have two close options: SIM 300 and SIM 600. These SIM only plans are available on either a 1 or 12 month contract, lets look at the 12 month plans. The SIM 300 plan is £10 a month and includes 300 minutes, 3000 texts and 1GB Internet data. The SIM 600 plan is £15 a month and is the same as the SIM 300 plan apart from it offers 600 inclusive minutes. Buying the phone PAYG and then adding on the SIM 300 plan over two years works out as £440, with the SIM 600 plan it works out as £560; giving effective monthly costs of £18.33 and £23.33 a month respectively.

In both cases these are cheaper than buying the £25 a month contract. And they also give you the added freedom of only being tied into a one year contract rather than a two year one. So it just goes to show that if you do your homework you can often save yourself a tidy penny. Below is a table summarising the information.

Update May 4th, 2011 Three have now dropped the price of the Galaxy Ace on the Text 500 plan from £25 to £22, giving a total cost of £528 over two years.
Update May 17th, 2011 Three have now added this phone on the Text 300 plan for £20 per month. This includes includes 300 minutes, 5000 texts and 500MB Internet data, totalling £480 over two years.
Update July 26th, 2011 Three have now dropped the price of the Text 500 plan to £20, the Text 300 plan to £18 and added it to the Text 100 plan for £15 a month. They have also dropped the price of the phone on PAYG to £150.

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