I joined SMARTY around 7 months ago and I wanted to share my own experience, so that others can hopefully can benefit from what I have learned so far…
I live in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and the networks here are generally pretty good on the whole, some better than others. I had previously been with O2 and MVNOs using O2 giffgaff and Sky, because these had been generally the most reliable for me. Sky then introduced roaming charges…so, I left and moved to Lebara (MVNO running on Vodafone). After a few weeks of poor data connectivity I decide to move to SMARTY…the first time I’ve used 3 network infrastructure.
My move to SMARTY wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t as smooth as with other providers, and seemed to take ages to fully port ie usually one goes off, the other goes live…but it took almost a day to fully move over! But, eventually everything went through and it was working.
I’d already done a “pre test” with a free 3 PAYG SIM to test I could get SMARTY, and was amazed I had 5G in my home, albeit only showing 1-2 bar on my iPhone 14 Pro, but 5G and speeds around 200Mbps (so, don’t just go with how many bars your phone is showing).
Billing was a challenge for the first few months. The issue is the delay in the processing information on your dashboard…so your service appears as if it has not renewed but it is the delay in SMARTY processing the payment! Once I’d sussed this, everything has been smooth then going forward (Basically, ignore the dashboard if it’s come out of your bank until it updates!)
My phone has Wi-Fi calling capability, but as others have commented it does drop calls quite frequently, and also when I call my folks on their landline occasionally I get an echo. As I’m only pulling 1-2 bars of 5G, my phone would automatically connect to Wi-Fi calling, so I’ve turned it off. 1-2 bars is enough, in fact 1 bar is much more reliable than Wi-Fi calling…but it’s good to have an alternative option on the table.
Data speed out and about so far have been phenomenal, much better than other networks I’ve been with. I Stream Spotify in my car and with O2 and Vodafone, music would stop in flat spots…not experienced any of that so far. When using social networking, there is slight delay initially loading a video, but once playing then it is fast at filling up the buffer to play without interruption.
I think if SMARTY are reviewing this, then they need to look at
1. messages to short codes e.g banking/medicine/competitions. Lots of customers moan that they are not able to do this.
2. eSIMs. Again, lots of customers want SMARTY to provide this, for things like smart watches. I realise this is mainly a limited market to main networks, but Lycamobile, an MVNOnow offer it.
My current speed upstairs, line of sight to the mast (about 1/2 a mile away)…speed downstairs varies between 30-200 depending on where I am in the house.
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
