British cellular carrier, EE, has revised its monthly contract offerings and introduced a range of new plans. These are designed to offer customers more choice and flexibility and are arranged in three tiers – the 4GEE Essentials handset plan, the 4GEE handset plan and a new, higher performance 4GEE Max handset plan. Each of these tiers offers a range of benefits for customers with the maximum download speed variable between each tier. The middle and upper tier come with a “roam like home” perk, whereby customers get either a set 500 MB allowance or their usual data allowance when roaming throughout the European Union. All of the new plans give customers access to the BT Sport app, a nod towards EE’s new parent, BT.
In the detail, EE’s new range consists of a total of fourteen plans. The bottom tier, 4GEE Essentials, starts at £16.99 a month and for this, customers benefit from 300 minutes, 300 MB of monthly data, unlimited UK text messages and six months access to the BT Sport application. Download speeds are capped at 20 Mbps for this and the other three 4GEE Essentials, which include 500 MB (500 minutes), 1 GB (750 minutes) and 2 GB (1,000 minutes) plans, which costs £23.49 a month. The next tier up offers download speeds of upto 60 Mbps and here, plans start at £20.99 for the 1 GB plan. This comes with unlimited minutes and text messages throughout the European Union plus 500 MB of EU roaming data. The 4GEE plan stretches up to a 20 GB UK data allowance at £35.99 a month. Finally, the 4GEE Max plans start at £25.99 for 3 GB of UK and European Union data, unlimited minutes and text messages, access to BT Sport for the duration of the plan and the fastest possible speeds. The 4GEE Max plan reaches £45.99 and 40 GB of monthly allowance.
On the one hand, it’s good to see EE preempt the new European Union roaming laws but on the other, customers now need to consider more choices when upgrading their plan. Not only do the need to consider their minutes and data requirements, but how quickly they want access to their data and if they travel throughout the European Union. It’s a great idea for EE to include roaming and even different download speeds, but it is now offering customers fourteen plans to pick from and deliberately throttling its network (proudly shown as the UK’s fastest) for lesser plans. Some of EE’s devices include Wi-Fi calling, although EE still charge roaming rates for customers making calls over a Wi-Fi network when abroad unless they use a VPN connection back to the UK.