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I am currently in the market for a sim-only phone plan, but my phone can in no way use Data. Therefore I have been hunting for any provider that still offers Data-less plans, without any luck thus far.

It's come to the point that it is taking me so long that the value of the time may outweigh the savings (though I am also looking over the edge of a sunk-cost-fallacy pit). Getting this question answered may swing me over one way or the other:

What part of a mobile plan's cost is Data, as a guideline?

Weckar E.
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2 Answers2

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If your usage is minimal, then you may be best off with a pay as you go plan from a cheap operator like 1pmobile or Giffgaff.

If you are going to be using more then there are a number of £4-£5 monthly plans where a bare minimum of data is offered in addition to quite a lot of minutes/texts. The data on these plans is a negligable fraction of the cost.

Mark Perryman
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This won't really be easily measurable. The price of a mobile plan will be primarily driven by what the market can bear, bearing in mind competition.

Clearly there will be some kind of floor set in the long-term by the costs of actually providing the service, and mobile providers have had to invest heavily to provide fast data networks (3G/4G) with sufficient capacity to meet demand.

If there was a mobile provider that hadn't done this and so had lower investment costs to recoup, they might have a lower cost base and an incentive to offer cheaper no-data plans. But there isn't, and for all the existing providers, not offering data on just some plans won't really save them very much and will add extra administrative overhead.

So in reality if there's no competitive pressure to provide data-less plans at a lower cost than data-inclusive plans, mobile providers won't do it.

Ganesh Sittampalam
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