Apple One Included With EE's Revamped 'Full Works' Phone Plan in UK

Man, the cost of cell phone plans (or tariffs, as I understand you Brits like to call them) are so much cheaper in the UK than what we pay here in the US.

On EE here along with my immediate household. £20 each (24.11USD) for me and £16 (19.27USD) each for additional lines for wife & son gets us 120GB 5G data each, along with unlimited voice/SMS (not that we use much of the latter two). The cost includes tax as well. Decent 5G coverage for son & I on iPhone 12 & 13 Pro respectively, wife constrained to 4G on her 11. These are 24 month SIM only (service only) contracts, as our phones are bought directly from Apple.

If it’s any consolation, a number of us Brits wince when we see what the US carriers charge (AT&T & Verizon especially). There’s an argument for us having less geography to cover in cell towers, but even still.

On the EE Apple One thing, it looks like this is only for monthly contracts that include buying an iPhone direct from EE. Was hoping that I might be able to snag Apple One Premium at a slight discount from EE rather than the £29.99 I pay Apple per month. Not to be though - EE supplied Apple One is individual only, and as part of a handset inclusive contract.

Eh. I pay £6 a month for unlimited calls, texts and 4GB of 5G data, and it is a 30-day rolling contract, so I can upgrade when I need more data and then downgrade when I am back with WiFi.

Apple's services revenue (which includes Apple One) has been growing like crazy. Better margins, no reliance on supply chain or country of manufacturer.

^^ This.

There's only so much hardware you can sell. A sort of "victim of their own success", people tend to hold on to Apple products longer, which reduces their hardware sales. They've also lowered the prices for their hardware as well. A 9th gen ipad (64 GB), brand new, was as low as $300 (USD). A decade back, an entry level iPad alone would be something like $550, unless you got a used one (that's how I got my iPad Air, 1st gen, 128 GB, for only $400 when its MSRP was $800). Ditto with cheaper iPhones. Pushing subscriptions is also a numbers game.

Not everyone is interested in unlimited data.

I have a 7GB plan and I barely use more than 2GB… so… unlimited would be of little use to me.
£6.55/mth 🤷🏻‍♂️

I prefer to do most of my internet on a desktop PC with ethernet cable. Or perhaps via wifi on a Chromebook. 2.5 to 3 GB would be on the heavier side for me. IIRC, my typical usage is about 1 to 1.5 GB a month, if even that. OTOH, for young 'uns who do stuff exclusively on their phones, they can easily burn through 16 GB per month!

I've stopped my subscription, £20 pm and it's all rubbish, YMMV, now that cash is going on leccy and gas

What's coverage like? All of my Brit clients lament how they still don't have 4G outside of cities and that 4G and 5G are spotty in many cities. Is it really that bad?

I get 5G both at work and home in a medium sized town on the North West coast of England via EE, not a major city like Manchester or Liverpool. 4G is standard around town where 5G coverage has yet to be rolled out. Whilst down in London a couple of weeks ago, 5G was pretty standard everywhere (non-US/North American iPhones only have sub-6 5G, not mm-wave).

On the motorways, trains etc between towns and cities 4G is ubiquitous and quite often CarPlay will tell me I’m on 5G. 4G coverage gets a little spotty when in rural areas.

All of the above is my experience on EE. O2, Vodafone & Three will have their own coverage strengths and weaknesses.

All in all, my 4G/5G coverage and experience with EE is pretty good. Switched to them from O2, who had iPhone exclusivity from the 2007 launch, in 2014 and haven’t had any cause for concern with their coverage/service.

IIRC, you guys pay "the same" for fuel, but GBP is worth more than USD, and the cost is per liter, not gallon?

Petrol/gas here is sold by the litre. There are 3.785 litres to a US gallon.

Taking our pump price of my local supermarket filling station, of 167.9p (£1.679p) per litre, this works out at £6.35 or 7.64USD per US gallon. Not sure how that compares to the pump prices across the pond.

Be careful if you have several years of subscription to go. I did for apple music and when I took out the EE music offer it wiped my pre-existing 4 years remaining and dropped it to 1 year. I refuse to take them up on the Apple TV offer as this will undoubtedly happen again. I have 3 years on that.