Difference in UK tariffs and Irish ones

charlie_says

For example Vodafone, my provider here.

Here I get for approx €50 a month the Anytime 200 package:

• 200 anytime minutes
• 1 GB internet usage
• 200 texts
• Free vodafone to vodafone

For roughly the same cost in the UK (£40 per month) you can their Unlimited 18 package:

1. 600 anytime minutes
2. Unlimited internet
3. Unlimited texts
4. Free vodafone to vodafone

Oh and a Blackberry storm for free!

:mad::mad::mad:

Why the price difference, it is a bulk service they are offering ffs! There is no difference between the two services. One even overlaps the other up near the border.

Vodafone have way many more staff, a much bigger and expensive to maintain network AND have to pay more tax to the government in the UK. So how can they possibly offer almost 1/3 of the same product here for the same price.

This kind of **** really pisses me off.

Tom Dunne

charlie_says wrote: »

Vodafone have way many more staff, a much bigger and expensive to maintain network AND have to pay more tax to the government in the UK. So how can they possibly offer almost 1/3 of the same product here for the same price.

This kind of **** really pisses me off.

Different country, different company, different market conditions?

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Rsaeire

Tom Dunne wrote: »

Different country, different company, different market conditions?

Captain Morgan wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I agree with both the above posts.

There is approximately 15x more people in the UK in comparison to Ireland, so it would be only logical that UK residents have better mobile tariff and handset deals than we have here in Ireland.

In saying that, would I prefer to have the same, or similar, deals in Ireland that the UK have? Of course I would, but I'm aware that there are reasons why we don't.

ardmacha

There is approximately 15x more people in the UK in comparison to Ireland, so it would be only logical that UK residents have better mobile tariff and handset deals than we have here in Ireland.

This theory would be fine, but I suspect that places like Finland also have better packages and they have the same population. It doesn't follow that big countries have cheaper services than smaller ones, are Belgian phones more expensive than German ones?

Rsaeire

ardmacha wrote: »

This theory would be fine, but I suspect that places like Finland also have better packages and they have the same population. It doesn't follow that big countries have cheaper services than smaller ones, are Belgian phones more expensive than German ones?

There is not one simple answer to why UK mobile tariffs and handsets are cheaper than here in Ireland; this is why I agreed with the two posts before mine and made my own point.

ardmacha

There is not one simple answer to why UK mobile tariffs and handsets are cheaper than here in Ireland;

True. The point is that if you say that it is due to population then there is little that can be done about it, if it is due to particular competitive issues in the market then perhaps something can be done about it.

buddy

Higher property costs.
Higher staffing costs.
Higher utility costs (energy).
Smaller country gives less economies of scale.

P.S. You don't get 1 gig internet in the PC200 plan in Ireland.

charlie_says

The 1GB ISP promo is 10 extra per month.

tony1kenobi

ardmacha wrote: »

True. The point is that if you say that it is due to population then there is little that can be done about it, if it is due to particular competitive issues in the market then perhaps something can be done about it.

Population is a massive reason for the cost.Vodafone UK buying 10,000 handsets will get a far better price than vodafone Ireland buying 1000 of the same handset. The manufacturers are also competing but they can't compete if their handsets are not on the market.

Patrickof

Also, don't forget that a lot of the UK plans also come with a "sweetener" when you sign up, ie a Samsung NC10 netbook or a PS3 or Xbox.

Blue_Wolf

Tom Dunne wrote: »

Different country, different company, different market conditions?

Exactly, the key one is market. They have a bigger market to sell to and in contrast there are not that many mobile providers in the uk, more than Ireland but not when you take their population size into consideration.
We are a small market with 5 networks if you want to include Tesco shiver!

Population of Uk 60,943,912 (July 2008 estimate)
Population of Ireland 4,156,119 (July 2008 est.)

So they have 14/15 times more population than us and they definitely don't have 73 mobile network providers over there (14 x 5networks in ireland).
So the market share is a lot bigger for the company and therefore can offer some outstanding tariff's.

Simple as that.

Patrickof

But is that an entirely fair comparison, if they have 14/15 times the population, then assuming that the networks are based on similar technology and the 'max no. of users per base station' is similar, then they'll require 14/15 times the number of base stations. Backhaul etc. will also need to be bigger but I accept there's econoimes of scale here.

I accept that in the high pop density areas they'll have an economy of scale, but surely Wales/Scotland/Norfolk area/and NI have reasonably similar pop densities to Ireland (not a factor of 14 or 15 anyway).

blaz

The UK is the only market in the world where you have the 4 major players competing for customers: Vodafone, T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom), Orange (France Telecom), O2 (Telefonica).