We wonder when T-Mobile will also announce offering the iPhone to their customers.  As T-Mobile and Orange announced earlier this month, they will be merging their companies and the signing is expected to take place at the end of October.  The merger will probably give T-Mobile the right to offer the iPhone.  We imagine that T-Mobile will not announce adding it to their offerings until after the signing.

First off, we now support full monthly bill tracking. You can sign up and have the system automatically build your personalised assessment each month, instead of having to resubmit it manually. This is just a baby step towards something much more powerful that we are working on, but signing up now will start to build a much more accurate recommendation as you continue to use the service. The system will still use your last three monthly bills for the moment, but we will be crafting some powerful new algorithms to stitch them together and create a complete tapestry of your usage.

Coincidentally, if you are looking to get a new contract this Christmas, now is the perfect time to sign up with BillMonitor. By the time your contract ends you’ll have enough data to get a great forecast for your next purchase.

Secondly, we are currently running a trial of a new version of the homepage. If you are lucky enough to be picked at random by our testing software you will be presented with a slightly reorganized front page. Feel free to drop us an email to feedback at billmonitor.com with any comments on either design.

Yesterday OFCOM released their “Mobile Sector Assessment“(PDF). Billmonitor is in a unique position to comment at a consumer level view of the market, through the analysis of hundreds of anonymised actual user bills.

Despite a significant increase in the choice of tariffs and services available, BillMonitor’s research shows that 88% of UK contract mobile users could save on average 42.6% (£211 annually) on their mobile bill by choosing the right tariff. This suggests that the 26 million UK mobile contract users could make £4.4 billion in savings each year.

OFCOM’s Mobile Sector Assessment (MSA) states that ‘competition in the mobile sector has, on the whole, been a success for UK consumers.’ BillMonitor agrees this is true in terms of available choice, however from the numbers above it’s clear that consumers are struggling to make the right choice. Consumer Focus, the independent campaign organisation, in their recent assessment found that the mobile sector had the lowest rating in terms of consumer confidence.

It’s not hard to see why this is the case; BillMonitor is tracking 228,532 tariffs and add-ons which represents significant and meaningful choice. However, as mobile consumers, our usage patterns are changing continuously as new services become available. The MSA highlights the increasing amount of calls made as well as the rise in usage of new services, especially data and text; BillMonitor sees evidence this makes it hard for consumers to keep up with suitable tariffs. Compounding this, BillMonitor has found that 70% of consumers are not confident in estimating their usage with 36% saying they have ‘no idea’.

BillMonitor has found substantiating evidence. As seen in actual user bills, 82% of users have a plan that is too big for them, and while some extra inclusive usage is desirable, usually the consumer is paying for many minutes and texts they never use. At the same time consumers are failing to take advantage of bundles available to them for the new data or other services they are starting to use (BillMonitor is currently tracking 163 bundles).

Do consumers really need to switch provider?
Although the MSA highlights the importance of switching provider in driving healthy competition, finding the right tariff does not necessarily mean switching. Indeed as the MSA highlights 74% of mobile users are not interested in switching provider currently and 60% have never switched.

Summary Statistics
88% of BillMonitor users save money by switching to the tariff most suitable for them – an average saving of £17.56. a month – that’s £211 a year! In percentage terms, the average mobile contract user seen by BillMonitor saves 42.6% on deals that include a free phone.

• There is no need to change provider – 91% still save £17.64 on average by changing to their most suitable tariff with their current provider (including SIM-only tariffs)
• If they are willing to keep their existing handset then 92% can save £19.47 on average per month using a SIM-only tariff most without changing provider. The MSA highlights the growing popularity of this type of contract, particularly due to the lack of any lock-in period.
• If everyone used BillMonitor to find their ideal tariff, the UK average monthly bill would drop from £39.27 to £21.28.

Conclusion
BillMonitor agrees that there is sufficient and growing choice in the mobile market, however we believe the significant inefficiency evidenced by consumer choices requires attention. BillMonitor is aiming to provide the information the consumer needs to navigate the huge choice available and we would welcome specific initiatives by OFCOM on this front.

Vodafone’s Summer promo started yesterday, so now Vodafone customers can enjoy roaming phone calls at no extra cost, as long as they’re on Passport. We had a think about how to model this in our system and we decided that if we removed the 75p cost per call, you’d get stung when September came along and the cost was added again. Therefore, the prices shown in BillMonitor continue to reflect the full cost.

This promotion is an excellent deal for the Summer, and we hope that lots of our customers can save money with it, but we don’t want you to sign up for a contract that’s going to work out more expensive for you in the long run.

Most people who use the site won’t even notice that we’re busy, but for some of you, the site might slow down and your assessments might take a long time to get back to you. We’re really sorry about this and we’re working super hard to make sure that this happens for as few people as possible. If you’re unhappy with any part of our service, drop us a line on twitter or email us at feedback@billmonitor.com and we’ll do our best to get back to you.

OFCOM (the independent regulator for mobile in the UK) is trying to make sense of it all in its upcoming ‘Mobile Sector Assessment’. Their aim is to see what can be done to make mobile better for all of us – consumer confidence in mobile is lower than all other services considered in a report conducted for the government last June. In preparation OFCOM released a consultation report with a series of questions that have been investigated over the last year. In the consultation they highlighted some key issues:

Tariff confusion:
According to OFCOM only 15% of consumers find it ‘very easy’ to choose a contract. This isn’t surprising to BillMonitor: maintaining our comprehensive tariff and bundle information is serious work – tariff information is unstandardised, with bundle information scattered across many network’s webpages, and with much of the details only in small print terms and conditions. We think that having a choice between over 100,000 tariffs is a good thing – it means there is a tariff out there that is great for you – but an unclear choice is no choice.

These factors can lead to consumers being on a more expensive contract than is right for them. We see the effects of these problems in our results, as almost every one who uses our bill assessment could be on a significantly better tariff. In fact, we’ve been busy number-crunching to find out exactly how much people should be saving – the results will be in our interim mobile price index report, some of which makes for some eye-watering reading.

Billing and cost clarity:
Both the OFCOM consultation and a recent report by Consumer Focus talk of the hidden costs in billing. Often operators charge for itemised paper bills, even though without itemised billing it is impossible to see where your money is being spent. Different networks bill the same types of calls in inconsistent ways such as (depending on the network) rounding up calls, deferring charges and excluding voicemail from your inclusive allowances. BillMonitor takes these kind of things into account when working out the best tariff – but we often have to phone up the networks to find out exactly how much a certain type of call will cost. Compounding this is the fact the each network presents their bill differently and with varying levels of detail.

Ease of switching:
The current economic situation is making many mobile users think about switching. A recent survey by Booz & Company found that 43% are considering changing to a cheaper contract. Switching mobile network while keeping your number should be easy – you just get a PAC code from your old network and give it to your new one. It’s never quite that simple though; one of the BillMonitor team recently spent 45 minutes being bounced around a call centre, finally being put on silent hold for 10 minutes before he finally managed to get a PAC! Even though most BillMonitor users still save when they switch to a better tariff with their current network, consumers should be allowed to move to a good deal on a different network without this hassle.

Problems like these are exactly the reason why we created BillMonitor and we’re looking forward to see what OFCOM has to say.

In summary, Vodafone Passport customers (And that’s anyone on Vodafone, as long as you opt in to it for free) will be able to use their phone to call and text the UK for the same prices as at home in 35 countries across Europe. As long as you’re calling back home, the free minutes and texts from your plan will apply. This all kicks in on the 1st June and runs through to the end of August.

On top of that, international calls will fall to as little as 5p per minute for pay as you go users from 15th May.

This is sure to leave most networks in the dust for big international users. Will any other networks step forward and attempt to compete?

Bloggers provide a more personal insight into the industry which can be invaluable, and often, a lot more interesting than the news sites! We follow Jonathan Jensen, James Whatley, and Ben Smith, all of whom have written for MIR and are well worth a read. MJelly also presented a column on MIR and continues to provide news about the latest mobile services entering the market.

Carnival of the Mobilists is an incredibly interesting news source. Each week it is hosted by a different mobile blogger and aims to digest the weekly news and pick out the best stories. It travels all over the place but you can always keep track of it on the carnival homepage!

We’ve recently subscribed to The Fone Cast after MIR posted a link and we’ve found it to be an invaluable resource, providing a podcast full of all the mobile news worth hearing about as well as a quality news blog. MocoNews is another fantastic source for industry headlines. For mobile reviews, we keep an eye on Mobile Phones UK and Top Mobile Phone Reviews.

If you’re interested in a particular brand of phone or network, chances are there’s a blog to suit you. We watch All About iPhone and The Nokia Blog, for example, as well as TMoNews for all the T-Mobile news.

Finally, something exciting and shrouded in mystery. Rumour has it that The Really Mobile Project (Now on Twitter!) is going to be the next project from some of the old MIR people. At the time of writing, very little is known about exactly what it’s going to be, but it’s sure to be well worth a look if you’ve got an interest in mobile.

Oh, and, of course, don’t forget to compare your tariff on BillMonitor to make sure you’re getting the best value for your money.

Have we missed any? Let us know your favourites!

We always suspected it takes a PhD in mathematics to understand mobile phone contracts. Now Oxford boffins have proven it takes three of them.

You’re too kind, Flora!