I previously had a Pay as You Go mobile on the Orange network and I have to say I was satisfied with it completely. Then the first WAP phones came out and in my innocence I bought one of the contraptions. The phone itself was a Mitsubishi Trium and I would stress I have no problems with the phone itself.
The deal on offer in Dixons was keenly priced and the network available was BT Cellnet. The call charges on this network are on a par with their competitors and I bought the phone on this basis. As a bit of a bonus BT Cellnet give me 200 minutes a month of free calltime which can be used either on the WAP internet via Genie Mobile or to any landline. This is quite good although the minutes must be used at weekends only.
However, the downside to this is that a top up voucher of at least £10 must be purchased every thirty days to keep your connection! Now I don't claim that I was misinformed about this when purchasing the phone but this type of voucher expiry has been dropped by most other networks now and I would have thought Cellnet would be wise to follow suit.
In addition, Genie Mobile who are owned by BT Cellnet, now sell their own brand of Genie Mobile phone and offer free text messages and cheaper calls although the top up rules still apply. No sign of this offer to existing users. Tut Tut Cellnet.
Worst of all though is that when the networks get busy, it is almost impossible to get a connection. During one of the old firm games (Celtic-v-Rangers for the uninitiated) I was being kept informed of the score by several friends via text messages. They all use the Orange network and got their messages through with no problem. Me? well I couldn't get one message out at all during the match or for hours after it finished. And this lack of connection is repeated on almost a daily basis.
Poor show Cellnet.
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Mar 17th, 2001
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