Picking UK Mobile Phone Service Providers

Based on research and conversations with both current students and friends living in London, if you're looking for a mobile phone service provider and are on a budget, Three or Giff Gaff are the ones for you.

I recommend picking up a prepaid SIM (they call it Pay As You Go in the UK) from Three asap when you visit London (or are up for the Admits Weekend). This is what I did when I was there for a week. Here's why:

• I would be contactable without having to pay overpriced auto-roaming charges
• I'd have a UK number that I can give to friends and family for when I later move to London
• I'd be contactable and be able to contact people without having to pay overpriced auto-roaming charges subsequently when I move to London
• Three charges £0.01 per MB, £0.02 per text and £0.02 per min for calls, which makes it very cheap if you tend to do all your texting and calling through Whatsapp the way I do.

Why Three and not Giff Gaff? Well, Giff Gaff operates by monthly bundles, the lowest being £5. It makes it cheaper than Three overall, but since I wasn't going to be there for a month, why pay for what I wasn't going to use? As is, in that week I barely used £1 from my £10 credit loaded on the SIM.

£10 btw is the lowest value you can load on a Three PAYG SIM. Definitely worth my doing research before hand because they'll try and sell you the SIM with the £10 or £20 monthly bundle at the store so just make sure you let them know exactly what it is you want - a free SIM and to load some credit on it.

My plan after moving to London in terms of mobile providers would be to use up all my credit on the Three SIM, and then simply port my number over and switch to Giff Gaff for their cheaper monthly bundle. Well...that is if I run through credit enough to warrant it. One of the great things about Three if you plan to travel (which I am), is that they don't have roaming charges for a select list of countries. And in case you were wondering, Australia and NZ are on the list! See full list here. Go figure.

Technology at London Business School

I got an email saying that LBS has an app for admits and that it was a great way to connect with future classmates. So I downloaded this especially since I wouldn't be able to make the admits event happening right now. Here's the app on the phone

The app has some pretty cool features like being able to see all the admits for your class without having to login to the LBS Portal. Like any social media app you can upload photos to share with the class and like and comment status updates and photos. You can also view events and event agendas.

The app also links to parts of the LBS website like the portal and the Accept Your Place page, which is where it becomes a bit of a let down - the site isn't mobile friendly. In this mobile day and age where responsive design has been around awhile, I do wonder why LBS has yet to update all parts of their website to be responsive. Or even create a mobile version of the site.

Perhaps this is in the pipeline as I write this, but for now at least, those wanting to access the site or Portal via mobile will have to make do with really zooming in to tap on any links or those fields to sign in.