EE defends lack of unlimited 4G data plan, claims it would be abused

EE has defended its decision not to offer unlimited data plans on its new 4G LTE network.

The network announced its tariffs earlier this week with 500MB, 1GB, 3GB, 5GB and 8GB two-year plans available ranging from £36 all the way upto £56 a month.

Pippa Dunn, EE's consumer CMO, told TechCrunch that they didn't feel it was necessary to take the step as only "super techies" want unlimited data and catering to them would have forced the prices up further.

She said: "You've got your super techie people… who would love nothing more than for us to have given unlimited data packages but for the vast majority of the 27 million who are our customers they don't need it.

"If we'd had to price for allowing all of those techie users to be able to use as much data as they'd want your average consumer would really have suffered."

Network abusers

Dunn said, on average, Orange and T-Mobile customers are falling way below their allocations and by offering unlimited data the company would have attracted people who would abuse the network.

She added: "We've looked at what customers are using at the moment and on average an Orange customer on a £36 plan uses less than 500MB a month and those customers who are on unlimited plans on T-Mobile Full Monty on average use 1.5GB.

"We don't think [unlimited data is] necessary [for 4GEE]. The only thing that happens when you get an unlimited data plan is you attract the people who cane the network and that's not great for any consumer.

"There will be customers on our network who are using 50GB of data a month… so you end up with customers who are basically making the service worse for all other consumers."

EE's 4G network goes live on October 30 and will, initially, offer LTE connectivity on the iPhone 5 with more handsets incoming by the end of 2012.