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Alongside shared 4GEE plans and a ‘cash on tap’ service, EE is also set to launch pay as you go EE mobile broadband plans.
It’s not quite as flexible as you might expect from a pay as you go service. Rather than just topping up your data as and when you want, you will have to choose from a selection of different monthly data allowances starting from £15 a month - a price which will give you 2GB of data which you can use for thirty days.
If you use up your data allowance before the end of the month then an EE web page will load up in your browser informing you of that fact and giving you the chance to then top it up for between £3 for 500MB and £30 for 10GB. There should also be a range of price points and data allowances in between those two extremes.
As well as just being able to get a data SIM, you’ll also have the option to get a mobile Wi-Fi device instead. There’s a choice of either an Alcatel L800 dongle for £50 or an Alcatel Y800 Mobile Wi-Fi for £70 and whichever one you choose it will come loaded with 2GB of data valid for thirty days.
While it doesn’t sound quite as flexible as a true pay as you go service, it certainly has a few advantages over taking out a contract. For one thing you can cancel it or change your monthly data allowance at any time (or within thirty days at any rate), so if you find that you need more or less data than you have, that another network has a better offer or that you’re just not making use of it you’re not tied into anything.
Then there’s the fact that by having to manually top up once you run out of data there’s no risk of hefty out-of-bundle charges, keeping you in control of how much you actually spend. The downside is that it’s not all that cheap, but then 4G in general is quite pricey and flexibility comes at a premium.
It’s almost surprising that it’s taken as long as it has for EE to launch pay-as-you-go 4G mobile broadband. After all, pay as you go has long been common place in the world of phones and it only makes sense that for tablets and the like that only require data there should be similar services, particularly with EE making such a big push to get 4G into everyone’s hands.
Still, it’s here now and if you’ve been curious about 4G but would rather go with another network - or at least wait and see what prices and allowances they’ll offer, then this could be a good stop gap, as you’ll get 4G now and will still be free to shop around for a better deal once Vodafone, Three and O2 launch their own 4G services.
