Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 22:56:58 on Fri, 19 Jul
2019, Recliner remarked:
MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 19/07/2019 15:07, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:45:40 on Fri, 19
Jul 2019, MissRiaElaine remarked:
Networks have tried hard over the years to introduce their
equivalentÂ* ofÂ* "standing charges" to fight back a little bit. One
I'll beÂ* writing aboutÂ* later (in more detail) in another
subthread, is the O2Â* requirement thatÂ* PAYG phones wanting to use
the tube Wifi are toppedÂ* up at least once aÂ* month.

A standing charge equals a contract. Making someone top up monthly
isÂ* effectively forcing them onto one in all but name.
Â*It's a slight discount, because the typical top-up would be £10 and
theÂ* typical contract £30. And because you can stop any time you like
(apartÂ* from some more recent hybrid plans that include a
partly-subsidisedÂ* phone) it's not in any sense a "contract".

Semantics. In all but name it is. If you have to pay a certain amount
of money each month regardless of how much you use it, then to me it's
a contract.

It's vastly more than semantics. The whole point of the "contract"
system for mobile phones (and many other infrastructure accounts) is
locking someone in for a minimum period. The impossibility of resigning
early is the only thing about the contract that ever really maters.

You can have one-month rolling contracts, say £10 a month. Some
operators may call it PAYG but it's still a contract as far as I'm
concerned and I wouldn't touch one with a very long pole.

No PAYG deals require monthly top-ups.

Some do, if you want to keep all the benefits (specifically something
like O2's access to tube-wifi).

Sure, and the same applies with Virgin PAYG: when i was on it, you never
had to top up, but there were additional benefits in the month after a
top-up of £10 or more. The way it worked was that the £10 got added to
your credit balance, where it lasted indefinitely, and could be used to pay
for calls, data and texts. But you got some additional benefits in the
month after a top-up that didn't carry over. This included Tube WiFi access
and 1GB of data. It may be different now



Or if you want to stay making[1] calls at all, if the credit expires at
the end of each month.
But after a period of complete inactivity you'll
likely lose the number, timescale depending on the network.

Yes, I think that's common, if not universal.


[1] Inbound termination fees, especially from classic landlines, are
lucrative, and so you'll probably retain the ability to receive
calls.