With the arrival of BT Mobile, we’ve finally come full circle, with BT once again offering mobile services. It’s taken a while to get here, with BT previously owning O2 (launched as Cellnet in 1985), before spinning the company off as its own business. This time around, the company doesn’t have its own network but instead has piggy-backed on the EE network. Confusingly, BT is currently in talks to buy EE, but until that deal is officially signed off, both the companies remain completely separate.
What do you get?
BT Mobile’s mission is to provide 4G contracts at some of the cheapest prices in the UK. It’s primarily a SIM-only network, with BT only offering a few budget phones. If you want to use a decent handset, you’ll need to provide your own, in which case you may want to check out our current best smartphones. If you bought your phone through another network rather than SIM-free you can have it unlocked.
After that, it gets pretty simple, with just three pay-monthly tariffs available. Each tariff is available for £5 less for existing BT customers. That makes the pricing rather attractive, with the entry-level package costing £5 a month for BT customers (£10 a month for everyone else), and gets you 500MB of data, 200 call minutes and unlimited texts. A mid-range tariff boosts the data cap to 2GB and gives you 500 call minutes for £12 per month (£17 for non-BT customers). At the top end, you can get 20GB of data and unlimited minutes for £20 per month (£25 for non-BT customers). All tariffs include unlimited access to BT's Wi-Fi hotspot network, which BT broadband customers already get for free anyway. Tethering isn't permitted on any of the tariffs, despite the fixed data caps.
The closest equivalent plans on EE cost £13 a month for 500MB of data and 500 minutes, and £16 a month for 2GB of data and unlimited minutes. There’s no 20GB plan available, with EE’s SIM-only deals topping out at 5GB a month with unlimited calls for £28 a month.
Contract length, upgrades and downgrades
All the deals have a 12-month contract period, but BT says customers can move between tariffs, even cheaper ones, without penalty, although customers can only downgrade once during their contract.
"You can upgrade at any time, and downgrade once during your contract," said Kelly Barlow, director of voice and mobile at BT. "We'll send you usage alerts and recommend you a different plan if we think you're better off on it."
On price alone, BT’s SIM-only plans are absolutely fantastic deals, although there are some limitations to the service, including speed, roaming and tethering.
Data speeds
Although the BT services piggy back on EE’s network, BT Mobile customers only get access to standard 4G speeds. That means that the double-speed 60Mbit/s and 4G+ 90Mbit/s (the latter is only available on certain handsets) are not available to BT customers. Instead, BT Mobile runs on the regular 30Mbit/s service.
We tested EE against BT Mobile using the Speedtest.net app for iOS 8.3 on an iPhone 6 Plus. With our EE SIM installed we saw download speeds of 29.2Mbit/s and upload speeds of 32.39Mbit/s. Switching to BT Mobile we saw speeds drop to 22.98Mbit/s and 15.22Mbit/s.
Speeds will vary by location and handset, and although there’s a noticeable difference between the two networks, you can hardly accuse BT Mobile of being slow. In fact, we’d say that its 4G speeds are more than quick enough, particularly given the price.
Tethering
Sadly, BT does not allow any tethering with its SIMs, so you’re out of luck if you want to buy the big data package and get all your devices online through your phone. This is going to be a deal breaker for some people, but if you don’t tether or you don’t mind buying multiple SIMs, it won’t be an issue.
Roaming
BT Mobile doesn’t have very competitive roaming deals, offering just standard charges. In the EU, for example, calls cost 18.8p per minute, data is 19.8p per MB and SMS messages cost 5.9p each. EE has the same standard charges, but it also offers data and call bundles: unlimited calls in Europe cost £2 a day, for example. The other networks offer similar deals, while Three lets you use your standard allowance abroad in a growing number of countries with its Feel At Home service.
BT has said that it’s looking into roaming bundles, but it doesn’t have any firm launch date for anything. At the moment, then, a BT Mobile SIM is not the best choice if you're a frequent traveller.
Other services, Wi-Fi calling and Visual Voicemail
BT Mobile doesn’t provide all the features that EE does, although it will be down to you as to how important they are. For a start, you don’t get the recently enabled Wi-Fi calling, which lets you make and receive calls and texts when you’re on a wireless network. It’s a brilliant way of ensuring that you’ve always got service, even when there’s no mobile reception, but it’s currently limited to a few handsets, including the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. Unless you live somewhere with absolutely terrible reception and you have one of the supported handsets, Wi-Fi calling isn’t enough of a reason to choose EE over BT.
There’s no Visual Voicemail for iPhone users, although BT does give you free calls to the voicemail system. Visual Voicemail is a slightly nicer way of getting messages but, again, its absence won't be a deal-breaker for most.
Finally, all BT Mobile customers get BT Sport for free, which you can watch via the app or by adding it to your Sky or Virgin Media set-top boxes.
What happens when BT buys EE?
We don’t currently know what will happen when BT’s purchase of EE goes through. BT has said that it will "reveal more details after the deal completes about what [EE] customers will be offered"; however, that's a process that could take many months, with the competition authorities likely to be poring over the detail of the takeover. People on existing BT contracts will most likely to continue to pay the same amount, and may even benefit from the deal.
Conclusion
There’s no denying the amazing value on offer here, with price plans starting at just £5 for BT customers. There are some limitations, particularly the poor roaming deals and the no-tethering rule. If you don’t really use these features and you can live without the absolute fastest 4G speeds, there’s a lot to like about BT Mobile. It wins a Best Buy award.