So it's a perfect storm to get everything sorted at the same time.
I like VF, and I intend to stay with them unless there's a compelling reason to try another provider. For many, many historical reasons, (does the word 'finger' mean anything to anyone these days?) I won't be signing up with Spork.
So I'm interested in people's thoughts and experiences with UFB, what happens to data consumption and caps, what one does with landlines and so on. Also, we don't want or need Sky.
To give y'all a feeling of current consumption, I have DSL2 at around 12 Mbits and eat say 40 GB a month. My phone chews 1-1.5 GB a month (on account) and my wife has the $19 prepay with 500 MB which also rolls around roughly once a month. Ideally, I'd like my total monthly spend (~ $170 across all three services) to remain the same or even reduce slightly. I don't want it to increase more than 10%, because we do get by on what we've got.
My 24-month plan initially was to purchase an HTC One V, and that handset sucked the fat kumara a few months later. My fault, but I wasn't sad, just pi$$ed off. I replaced it with a Nokia 620 which I like very much. My wife's HTC, same model, is a fetid piece of scheiße and she hates it dearly. I will not be purchasing a handset on a plan ever again.
So, I will keep my Winphone, a bit tatty but works like a dream. My existing mobile plan is now overkill and I think Open 1.25 GB for $39 seems about right. With my wife's move to an upcoming iPhone, I wonder if her data consumption will increase dramatically? She doesn't use much at the moment because her One V likes to imitate a glowing brick on a very regular basis, and because she's in Wifi range a lot of the time. It can take minutes or never to open a txt. So she tried my 620 but prefers the Apple. No idea why- I have a 5s for work and barely tolerate it. What's everyone's thoughts on price changes with the upcoming Apple announcement in Sept? Will the price drop happen then, or when the 6 reaches our market, and how long does that take?
I make next to no voice calls on my mobe, I txt my wife and family occasionally- perhaps no more than 5 txts a day tops. Not sure of her usage, but it won't be much more voice or txt. I imagine she'll stay on the existing prepay for a while, but I can't really see any other prepays with more data available for when the 5c comes along.
Home broadband is the kicker. I expect that I'd prefer the Ultrafast 100 to the 30, but is it worth the price difference? 80 GB or unlimited?
Additionally, I like the phones we have at home (some Uniden DECTs), but we make almost no calls from them. We do however call to Ireland in binges, say 2 hours solid once every month or few weeks. We video Skype to there as well. We keep the phone for my mother of advancing years (and other family members) who do not like to pay $$ to talk to us on our mobiles. Do we keep a home phone or go naked and work around getting voice to the house another way? Skype phones but we'd need to unplug our existing Unidens? We don't like the idea of using mobs as primary devices, mainly due to lower call quality compared with fixed lines. My mother is very hard of hearing.
What is everyone's experience with this? What happened to your data consumption? What did you do with your landline? Did you go for a single provider, or spread out depending on the service?
Are there any tips or traps, hints or observations for the unwary, or ways to do it better?
All comments appreciated. I'd like to do this right first time.
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