Mobile Phone Refresh: new iPhones and a move to Everything Everywhere
In 2011 the existing mobile phone contract with Vodafone came up for renewal and so, being diligent we decided to evaluate the top three/four mobile phone companies in the UK, Vodafone (again); o2; and Orange (which quickly became Everything Everywhere due to the merger between T-Mobile and Orange).
Our Vodafone contract had been a three-year deal, and our technology fund had expired. We were currently in a situation where a third of our user base had iPhones (some 3GS, some 4) and the rest were still on classic Nokia handsets which were starting to fall apart, consequently we were looking for a deal that satisfied a number of requirements. The issues that we wanted to solve were:
- Technology fund empty – we couldn’t get any more iPhones
- Data Usage – some users are utilising data despite not having an iPhone causing extra cost (no bundle)
- Signal Strength – some rare locations such as basement offices didn’t get signal.
- Cumbersome procedures – the method of setting up roaming and adding extra packages to mobile handsets is time consuming and awkward to complete.
- Disparate handsets
- Online billing system is not ideal
So we spoke to all the suppliers about this and got a proposal from each of them in turn. o2′s proposal arrived about two weeks after our deadline, but we included it for comparison anyway, the cost associated with their package was significantly higher and their unprofessional approach in this particular situation caused us to think it best to avoid them. Vodafone came back with a renewed quote for another three-year contract which had most of the contractual requirements we had, but didn’t address any service issues. Everything Everywhere came back with an offer that was just a little bit better than Vodafone, but for a shorter contractual term as well as giving us an increased technology fund.
The Everything Everywhere option allowed us to roll out iPhones from day one to our entire user base; it included options such as free user-to-user texts (which Vodafone didn’t) and we eventually rolled out the package with supporting documentation to great success (see other posts on this for more details).
Since deployment we have had feedback that the Orange network isn’t as strong as the vodafone one, but Orange have carefully explained their new phased rollout and we’ve in turn explained this to end users in a nice little infogram (or “picture”, if you so prefer):
See