Contract or Pay As You Go?

One thing I’ve noticed of late, especially when testing these excellent HTC devices, is that the traditional “contract” with networks is perhaps not always the best way to go.


I’ve been with Orange for years – I had a Nokia 5.1 to begin with, way back in the days when you had to pay a £100 up-front just to get the contract. Recently I grabbed an o2 Pay As You Go SIM card to test handsets for review etc. I’d never really done much with it apart from top up by £10 and that’s it. However, the other day I got a text message from o2 mentioning a Pay As You Go plan called favourite place. It gives you 500 minutes of calls (that’s over 8 hours) from your nominated place to any UK landline or other o2 phone. All you have to do is top up by £10 per month.



Now, I did some rough sums here. I’m currently paying about £40 – £50 per month for my Orange phone, but most of my calls are made when I’m stood outside work – I call home at lunchtime, plus other landline numbers during the day. Switching to this would drop my monthly outgoings by around £30-40 if I cancelled my Orange phone (which unfortunately I can’t at the moment)



So I’ve enabled it, and now I leave a spare phone on charge in the car. If I want to call anywhere when I’m in the specified postcode / favourite place it’ll hardly cost me a thing!


We’ve recently opened up our new networks forum where you can tell us what plan you’re on and whether it’s any good, but this got me thinking – how many of you guys are on Pay As You Go, and how many are on contract ? Let us know in our poll below!