Compare Mobile Prices & Tariffs Ireland August 2011

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Oliver Dempsey

Mobile phone price comparison IrelandThis month we’ll try to help you save money on your mobile phone bill.

The key to comparing the mobile phone prices was to understand the cost of calls, texts and Internet within each of the bundles first of all so then we could easily add or subtract them from the bundle later.

I won’t cover all of the bundles but I will cover what I consider to be the most popular ones and if anyone wants me to compare more afterwards just ask me and I’ll do it.

Mobile Market Share in Ireland
The first thing we need to do is find out the statistics on what percentage of the Irish market each of the mobile networks have so that we can work out how much it costs to make calls and send texts using their free bundles. I did this by taking a sample 10,000 jobs that were posted on Tradesmen.ie over the last 12 months and added up how many mobile numbers were 087, how many were 086, how many were 085, 083 and 089. The results were as follows: O2 (39%), Vodafone (49%), Meteor (<10%), Three (<1%), Tesco Mobile (<1%).

€20 Pay as you Go
Today we’ll look at Pay as you Go plans for all of the Irish Networks.  Here are the range of plans that fall into the €20 top up category below:-

O2
Let’s start first with o2, they have a pay as you go plan for €20 per month which gives free 02 to 02 calls and texts and it’s 30cent per minute to call other networks and 13cent to text other networks.

Meteor
Meteor have a pay as you go plan for €20 per month which gives free Meteor to Meteor calls and texts and it’s 29 cent per minute to call other networks and 12cent to text other networks.

Vodafone
Vodafone have a pay as you go plan for €20 per month which gives free Vodafone to Vodafone calls and texts and it’s 29 cent per minute to call other networks and 13cent to text other networks.

Tesco Mobile
Tesco Mobile have a pay as you go plan for €20 per month which gives free Tesco to Tesco calls and texts and it’s 20 cent per minute to call other networks and 9cent to text other networks.

Three Mobile
Three Mobile have a pay as you go plan for €20 per month which gives free Three to Three calls and free texts to any network and it’s 29 cent per minute to call other networks and you have free unlimited Internet usage.

Let’s see what the call charges are above based on our survey of mobile phone usage on Tradesmen.ie:-

O2 Charges
With O2 if you make and equal number of calls and texts and you make 39% of calls and texts to O2 users and 61% of calls and texts to other networks then the following will happen:- You will get 33 minutes of chargeable calls and 21 minutes of free calls. This is a total of 54 minutes of calls for €10 or an average of 18.5 cents per minute. You will get 77 chargeable text messages and 49 free text messages so this works out at a total of 126 text messages for €10 or an average of 7.9 cent per text message.

Meteor Charges
With Meteor if you make and equal number of calls and texts and you make 10% of calls and texts to Meteor users and 90% of calls and texts to other networks then the following will happen:- You will get 34.5 minutes of chargeable calls and 3.8 minutes of free calls. This is a total of 38.3 minutes of calls for €10 or an average of 26 cents per minute. You will get 83 chargeable text messages and 9 free text messages so this works out at a total of 92 text messages for €10 or an average of 10.9 cent per text message.

Tesco Mobile Charges
With Tesco if you make and equal number of calls and texts and you make 1% of calls and texts to Tesco users and 99% of calls and texts to other networks then the following will happen:- You will get 50 minutes of chargeable calls and 0.5 minutes of free calls. This is a total of 50.5 minutes of calls for €10 or an average of 19.8 cents per minute. You will get 111 chargeable text messages and 1.1 free text messages so this works out at a total of 112 text messages for €10 or an average of 8.9 cent per text message.

Three Mobile Charges
You have free unlimited Internet usage and free unlimited text messages to any network with Three so for example if you use 1GB of data I am going to subtract €10 from the price plan and let’s say you send 250 text messages so I will deduct another €1 for this. The remaining calls will be used from the €10 that’s left. If you are going to use the Internet and text messages a lot I would recommend Three for sure. Therefore with Three and our remaining €9 worth of credit, if you make make 1% of calls to Three users and 99% of calls to other networks then the following will happen:- You will get 31 minutes of chargeable calls and 0.3 minutes of free calls. This is a total of 31.3 minutes of calls for €9 or an average of 28.7 cents per minute. You will get unlimited free text messages to any network.

Vodafone Charges
With Vodafone if you make and equal number of calls and texts and you make 49% of calls and texts to Vodafone users and 51% of calls and texts to other networks then the following will happen:- You will get 34.5 minutes of chargeable calls and 33 minutes of free calls. This is a total of 67.5 minutes of calls for €10 or an average of 15 cents per minute. You will get 77 chargeable text messages and 74 free text messages so this works out at a total of 151 text messages for €10 or an average of 6.62cent per text message.

Summary for €20 Pay as you Go
As you can see from the above examples if you make most calls and texts to the Vodafone network it’s best to go with Vodafone but if a lot of your friends use one network more than the others then go with that one that most of your friends use. If you mostly send text messages and use the Internet then Three would be the one to go for as it has free texts to any network and unlimited Internet Browsing. I will cover Bill pay options over the next few days, there’s a huge lot of money to be saved on Bill Pay and of course Bill Pay is a lot cheaper than pay as you go.

If anyone has any comments or questions or if you disagree with anything I have said please feel free to submit it below.   To bookmark this page press CTRL+D in Internet Explorer or Firefox and I’ll add more price plan comparisons over the coming week.  Please tweet or share this article if you found it useful.

See you soon!

Cheers
Oliver Dempsey
Tradesmen.ie

You can find Compare Mobile Plans II here

All information for the above article was found on the following URLs:-
http://www.vodafone.ie/planscosts/prepay/current/


http://www.o2online.ie/o2/shop/plans/


http://www.meteor.ie/pay-as-you-go/

http://www.tescomobile.ie/OurPricePlans.aspx

http://www.three.ie/products_services/priceplans/prepay/index.html

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About Oliver Dempsey

Owner and Managing Director at Tradesmen.ie and contributor to the Tradesmen.ie Blog DISCLAIMER: All content provided in my articles is for informational purposes only. The information contained in these articles has been obtained from research carried out by myself through online and offline sources and through other writers and contributors who provide me with content. While I am responsible for the final editing of each article and I do my best to verify the information, I do not make representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information. Therefore you must not rely on the information contained in any of these articles and always make sure to seek the advice of a suitably qualified expert before embarking on any project.
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  • danny riordan

    That looks like an excellent Internet bundle from Three, do they have the same coverage as the others?

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  • brian davis

    Good article but they’re all too dear if you ask me, why don’t they let Orange and some of the other phone companies from the UK and Europe compete in this country. I’m with Vodafone by the way

  • admin

    Hi Danny,
    I found an article on a forum that says Three uses the Vodafone network, I suppose the best thing to do is get a sim for a week and try it out and see are you happy with the coverage in your area.

    Brian, I suppose they’d claim it’s because we have a smaller population but I think their prices should come down a lot more as well and especially data charges for roaming which are extremely expensive

    Cheers
    Oliver

  • John Quinn

    I am with eircom’s new mobile network, e-mobile, which seem good, any chance of including them in the comparison?

  • lidia

    Tesco mobile, prepaid – for top up for €10 or more you get another €10 (or more) free

  • Jamie

    This is abit of a silly artical for starters its a tradesman blog how many tradesmen are on pay as you go? Not alot id imagine and secondly its a very unfair comparison as when you checked the pre fix of the numbers on the website everybody knows it is impossible to tell the network without actually asking these people, as it has been possible for people to change network and keep their number for sometime now. Therefore meteor, three and tesco would be at a massive disadvantage from the get go as their networks are not around as long and alot of other people would have changed over while keeping their number especially to meteor from what i can see of my own family and friends!!

  • admin

    Hi Jamie,
    thanks for your reply. The reason why I did this comparison is that we help people to compare prices and save money on tradesmen so this article was to help you save money on your mobile phone bill as well. In relation to people changing their mobile providers your point is a valid one but it was just a quick calculation that I did on 10,000 jobs that were posted on Tradesmen.ie and I don’t claim that it is representative of the country as a whole. I’d say give or take 5% those figures wouldn’t be too far out. If anyone has the official figures please send them to me and I’ll be happy to include them on the post

    Cheers
    Oliver

  • PanurgePhobe

    I think three would be a good choice for me but my issue is when I travel, everything is so expensive with them abroad. With vodafone at the moment I really enjoy the 50mb of internet for 2euro a day, it’s not cheap but much cheaper than the 86c per Mb from three with my usage.