48 €12.99 plan will get 5G

[Shane]

I'm with Vodafone for my main. Just got a 48 sim card to try it out and it's actually despicable haha

[Seán]

The removal of the 200GB Fair Usage Policy limit appears to be 48's way of complying with the Advertising Standards Authority Guidance on the use of "Unlimited" and similar wording in marketing:

https://adstandards.ie/guidance-limitless-unlimited/

The guidance is effective from the 25th April 2024 with a 6 month period window to make amendments to comply. This period lapses in September, the month 48 will remove the 200GB FUP limit on next monthly €12.99 plan purchase from September onwards.

I am curious whether Eir will make any amendments to its 120GB Fair Usage Policy. Technically Eir's plans are unlimited, however, the 5 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up speed limit they apply appears to violate this bits highlighted in bold, i.e. Eir's traffic-management specifically targets those who exceed 120GB and Eir Mobile Broadband has a different commercial consideration, i.e. a 1TB FUP with a different price despite both being marketed as "Unlimited":

Telecommunication providers and operators are permitted by legislation to use reasonable traffic-management measures, which must be transparent, non-discriminatory, proportionate, and not based on commercial considerations. As such, this guidance is also to be read in the context of the obligations that service providers have, in particular under, the open internet (“Open Internet Regulations”)

Clear Mobile appears to escape this change as their 5Mbps speed cap applies to all customers regardless of data usage.

[Seán]

I saw someone mention on Boards that they were able to move back to the 4G €7.99 plan after being on the €12.99 5G plan for a month.

From looking at the 48 App, I see it still lists the €7.99 plan for me even though I switched to the 5G plan (on auto-renew) back when it launched in February:

   

If you don't need unlimited data and didn't get any improvement with 5G, you may be able to switch back to the €7.99 plan again.

[aleesi]

I have the 5G with auto-renew as well but the 7.99 plan is not showing up, only the 10.99. I don't think the 7.99 was available at the time I joined them tho.
On a separate note I wish they had eSIMs

[Seán]

After 4 years with 48 and a few years before that with 3, I decided to switch to GoMo, mainly down to one reason - Not being able to receive SMS messages at home, very annoying when trying to log on to services that depend on 2FA SMS codes such as VHI, Revenue, etc. 

I originally considered moving to Sky Mobile, but with several months of on-going issues reported on Boards between SMS verification codes, roaming, etc. and not having any Vodafone signal at my workplace, I ruled out that.

This also gives me the opportunity to see how Eir's mobile service performs.  While I could get network band and signal read-outs using my BNESim that roams on Eir, I could not test data performance due to being charged by usage and also throughput losses due to data being relayed through its parent Play network in Poland.  As BNESim can also roam on Three, I will still be able to monitor Three's bands and signals.

This is also my first time being on a bill pay mobile plan.  I have been prepay going all the way back to the days of Eircell when I got my first mobile phone back in 1999!

[aleesi]

Does gomo still have the fair usage policy?

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It seems that starting from November 1st, the 120GB limit is no longer being applied. I might give it a try

6.4A. For Customers signing up from 1st November 2024, fair usage data limits and/or data allowances referred to in this agreement, including in Clauses 6.4 and 6.6 or in any associated Fair Use Policy (‘FUP’), shall not apply to the Customer’s domestic data usage. We retain the right however to take appropriate steps for traffic management, where for example other users are likely to be adversely affected by a Customer’s actions.

[Seán]

I know the parent company Eir has stopped enforcing the 120GB fair usage policy on existing customers back in September. This includes the Eir Prepay €20 plan.

I will certainly give it a test run It does not take many speed tests in a 5G band n78 area to gobble up 100GB. When I first got 5G on my 48 SIM, I gobbled up the 200GB allowance (since removed) in Dublin just travelling to/from the B&B.

As I now have a Samsung S23, I am curious to monitor Eir's 5G roll-out / band refarming and to see whether they have any 5G Standalone such as in Letterkenny. I was surprised to see how well 5G Standalone progressed in the UK in Peter's recent video, particularly with EE already having up to 4 carrier aggregation!

[Seán]

With this likely being my last day on 48 before my number port I decided to try one last speed test over 3G inside during one moment it connected.  We have a StellaDoradus 900MHz repeater which has worked well for a number of years, but even this with a high gain directional Yagi cannot overcome how flaky 2G/3G Three signal has got over the past year.  

TestMy is one of the few speed tests that still supports dial-up and I cannot recall it ever telling me the connection is too slow on its initial block size!   After a minute, it failed completely with no Internet:

       

The best speeds I got with this repeater on Three was around 2020 where I typically got 8 to 14Mbps.  The repeater and its antenna are fine as the 3G service on GoMo remains unchanged based on past testing with prepay Eir SIMs (typically 2 to 4Mbps) and I get no signal at all inside with the repeater switched off.  A quick test with my new GoMo SIM gets around 4Mbps: 

   

[Shane]

Has anyone heard of three supposededly turning off their 3G service today?

[KildareP]

Has anyone heard of three supposededly turning off their 3G service today?

Three UK intended to shutdown 3G by end-2024 but I don't believe Three Ireland have even started the process yet.