oh yes, I did extensive testing - I swapped SIMS out (requiring restarts) and tried it in other devices with other OS's to eliminate technical setting error, this was before I contacted Three. I spoke to four people at Three who all said that they'd started blocking tethering on the mobile broadband product - directly and deliberately crippling the plan for no demonstrable reason.

did you try just restarting the device? seemed to work for me and got rid of that tethering block page not sure why it appeared but if it had stayed i would have just ended the contract, and gone to ee, they offering a 2 tablets (crappy) with 2x10gb each deal for £24, which allows tethering,

Just ordered this for my daughter... thanks, pay as you go is way too expensive!

I'm currently stuck in porting limbo with my 10 year old mobile number currently seemingly not existing if you try and ring it! It's been 24 hours since it went off on my old network and I now have the second Life mobile person to 'take ownership' of the issue who is apparently going to ring my landline later with an update when they have one...

Sim arrived yesterday (took 3 working days)

Called Life at 5pm to give them my PAC code

14 hours later the porting of my existing number to the Life sim has already happend

Data/internet up and running without any text or setup

Full signal 5mb download/1mb upload speeds

Early days but I'm happy with my lot

Called Life Mobile today and got this deal

A very friendly and competent customer service guy by the name of Nigel set it all up for me.

When on to Tesco mobile for my pac code, they told me they could not offer me anything anywhere near this

Thanks OP

Great deal OP, heat added.

I have been with Life for 2-months and cannot fault them; other than them being EE :disappointed:. Customer service in Wirral are fantastic and nothing has been too much trouble. I am currently on the £8/month tariff and will be contacting them for the £6/month uSwitch equivalent.

Highly recommended if EE can provide you with a suitable 3G signal?

UPDATE: I just contacted LIFE; 2-minute call, tariff reduced to £6/month from the next bill and a £2 credit applied to my account so that in effect this month is £6 too! Really happy and cannot fault the company.

Cheers

Yes, Three were quite adamant about *now* blocking tethering when I was arguing with their retention people. It's just downright spiteful (the very word I used when arguing with their placation-droid from legal), I asked them what they were afraid of (me using the 10gig that I'd purchased?). He gave me no answer to this at all; just diversionary excuses...
It's clear they're trying to sell the product and cripple it so that it's much harder to use the data that you've paid for; this will perhaps (marginally) relieve some spike congestion on their network but it's very deceitful to do that on a product designed for the purpose indeed especially when they'd sold me a 10gig allocation specifically. That they change this without telling anyone, went against the very purpose of this type of product and used diversionary tactics when I complained about it (steering me into the gap between Ombudsman and a backed-challenge) all points to a very untrustworthy company indeed. It's a shame, I had much higher hopes for them before but as others have mentioned here they seem to be increasingly greedy and money grubbing these days.

Just looked at three's tablet offers and noticed something new where it shows the prices. they now say that the prices may ( READ WILL ) increase in line with RPI each year

I guess only increases no decreases if it drops then. I'm not sure they would block tethering on their tablet deals as they include a mobile wifi device so that you can tether. otherwise there's no point giving that

Thanks OP, I've been keen for something after the bait'n'switch scam that Three have been pulling with their "mobile broadband" sims (which they've started blocking tethering for - and that's the POINT of a broadband SIM!).

SMART CAP CONTRACTS
Want complete peace of mind over your monthly bills? Smart Cap gives you the confidence of using your phone and all the services you’ve paid for without EVER getting a bill bigger than you want. To get you started we’ll set the cap, that’s the amount you can spend over your line rental, at £5 but if you want to lower or increase it give us a call. What’s smart is that if you reach this cap then you can keep on using any unused minutes, text messages or data in your monthly allowance without worrying…. now that is Smart. To amend your Smart Cap or learn more about capped contracts, call us on 500 from your LIFE mobile or 0800 0791133 from other phones.

Just switched to the £5 per month plan from TalkTalk mobile. Very happy, especially with the coverage and - rarely - tethering allowed. UK customer service excellent. Don't forget Top Cashback: http://www.topcashback.co.uk/life-mobile/

Review here: http://kenstechtips.com/index.php/life-mobile-review

To the people wondering about the £11 month 3 deal, I called them up and they wouldn't accept LIFE mobile as a valid comparison, but I mentioned the Virgin mobile deal and they matched that, £12 a month for unl txt, calls & 4gb 4G data.

You just have to persevere a bit and threaten to leave

aah IC - I didn't know Virgin blocked tethering, this is good to know. I'd love to see a site chart these things properly, it'd be a fair bit of work (getting honest answers out of telcos, slightly higher difficultly level than world peace I think).
I hate to say it but the industry in the UK needs to be regulated more; too many things gotten away with, too many customer gotchyas....

My response was referring to Virgin, as they include calls to 084 and 087, but no tethering.. LIFE do it the other way around...

Yeah, when I took out the mobile broadband SIM I was told specifically I HAD to use that for mobile broadband - I took it out explicitly for tethering and tablet data use, they were adamant that their network would detect the IEMI of the tablet (Galaxy Tab S 8.4 4g) and preclude it from the phone SIM plans and they sold me this specifically for the stated requirements saying “that’s what it’s for”.
I had the £15 10gig plan and it worked well for some time but after a while I started losing all connection in congested areas (Oxford St in London was zero-data-throughput one day). Then I noticed that I couldn't tether; thought it was my config until I did extensive testing and I called them, they were suddenly saying "oh you can't tether on that plan" - so they changed it, didn't tell me at all and went against the core purpose of the account.
I argued with this retention/legal guy and said "I paid for 10 gig - what are you afraid of, that I might actually USE what I paid for?". His response was "oh we have the right to change our plans when we feel like it". The thing is they degraded the plan in such a way that it’s not fit for basic purpose; I had to argue twice to terminate the account and get the next month’s money back, the first call centre guy lied to me about the refund but the retention/legal guy made sure it went through; they did this so that the ombudsman would take the line “oh you’re out of the contract and you got the refund on the unused month, nothing more we can do”. This was very deliberate on their part, push me into a crack between remedial measures; I used to see this in Australia quite a lot (VERY dodgy telcos there too).
The problem now is that they’re deliberately selling a product that is unfit for its core purpose and they know that too; it’s deliberately misleading and there’s no good or reasonable reason for it either. It’s not someone trying to do terabytes of tethering on an unlimited SIM – this is a very specifically purchased data allocation for a very specific purpose. Very sleazy thing to do; I have ZERO trust in Three now.

I think Three network's become the greediest of them all. Once they were the best value for money, but not anymore. Even their PAYG phones/packages were good. Now they just want to ride on the title of "most reliable network" and advertise it no end. Even their revamped shops are not user friendly, having to look at the small screens for more info on prices and details of handsets. And the loitering redundant staff need to be paid too ! A big own goal in my opinion.

Also they need the funds to finance the takeover of O2 (Hopefully), so try to squeeze every penny they can out of punters. Greedy B******s all of them.

Liking the look of their £5 pkg too. Thanks.

I wasn't sure so I emailed them and was sent this response:


So they do, it came form the horse's mouth on that one. I don't know if EE try to block it on any of their plans, do they?

Unlike Three which suddenly block it spitefully on their **mobile broadband** products! I mean WTF is it for then if they block tethering? I argued with them and they were sly and deceitful about it even promising to put it in writing and only sending me the phone number of the Ombudsman in a form letter.

They allow tethering on the 1Gb plan as I have been using them since October with tethering

Virgin is the bench mark to compare against with its 30 day standard rolling contract (piggybacking off EE):

Monthly Cost Minutes Texts Data
£10 2500 + Unlimited 1GB
£12 Unlimited + Unlimited 2GB
£15 Unlimited + Unlimited 4GB
£23 Unlimited + Unlimited 8GB

+ Included calls to 084 and 087 numbers.

No 4G? And their standard call charges seem very high (35p/min inc. voicemail, 12p txt & 30.6p picture messages) so could be costly if you over run? Not sure if you can start a new tariff if you run out early?

'Good' CS Dept :smile:

Been using Life for 3 months. Happy with them. Gods CS dept...UK based. Was paying £8/month but when the USwitch deal offered £6/m they reduced mine to £6/m after 1 call.

Recommend.

I got the £6 1GB month and can confirm you can tether with this unlike the ID Mobile SIM deals.

Great deal. I got my daughter the £6 a month one. You can cap the spending too which is a must with teenagers!

I'm only £5 per month on virgin 1 month rolling contract and I get 250 mins..unlimited texts..1gb data..free calls to virgin landlines and mobiles..suits me great!

Good deal

Just used this to usk Three down to 4GB, incl hotspot, unlimited calls and texts. 12 month deal. £11 a month.
Happy enough as it saves hassle and is still 4G.
A great bargaining tool if nothing else.

4GB data on 4G deal on 3 network from IDMobile if you're ok with 500mins:
http://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/sim_only_deal/2a1df4e13bccb4c0e7b49662cdabc982dfd93f60

Any idea if this deal will be still on tomorrow?.

Thank you - have a lovely weekend :wink:

Can you keep your existing number of you buy one of these rolling deals? ty

Wow. Thanks very much. I will be leaving talk talk in the new year and this looks ideal. 30 day rolling suits me just fine.

Great, thanks.

After one month is it still same price rolling?

Any tethering?

brilliant deal.......

Sounds like a great deal

Best to link to uswitch and not to the life mobile website. Good deal though.