Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/05/28/o2_launches_new_data_tariffs/
Hey, we'll do 4G for £15, says O2 (just mind how you go on the 1GB limit)
And please don't look at the Three UK website
Posted in Personal Tech, 28th May 2014 11:01 GMT
O2 is touting a new low-cost, low-limit route to 4G mobile broadband, and slipped in a few price rises for good measure. It's still not quite as low as Three UK.
Calls on O2 Pay & Go are now billed by the minute, rounding up to the nearest minute; so a call lasting 1min 21sec will now count as 2min. And O2 has dropped its Talkalot tariffs that lowered call costs from 25p a minute to 2p a minute. They are now always 25p a minute, and picture messaging goes up from 25p to 35p.
O2 however cannot rest on its laurels having lost 208,000 pay-and-go customers the first three months of this year, and has introduced pay-as-you-go data tariffs where there is no price difference between 3G and 4G.
These pay-as-you-go SIM-only Big Bundles include:
- 100 minutes of voice calls, 1,000 texts and 500MB of mobile data (sub-4G only) in a month for £10;
- 200 minutes, 2,000 texts and 1GB of data (4G supported) for £15;
- 400 minutes, 4,000 text messages and 2GB of data (4G supported) for £20.
(O2 quotes its monthly data allowances in Mb and Gb – megabits and gigabits – but we assume the telco's marketing bods meant bytes.)
Compare these bundles to Three's "pay monthly" SIM-only selection, which offers:
- 200 minutes, 5,000 texts and all-you-can-eat data on 4G in one month for £12.90;
- 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts, and all-you-can-eat data on 4G in one month for £23.00.
Note, we're comparing one-month pay-as-you-go contracts; committing to a year-long deal will lower the per-month cost, of course.
The O2 decision to level the playing field between 3G and 4G follows a similar move by Tesco – Tesco Mobile is a joint venture between Tesco and O2. The new O2 prices take effect from 29 May. ®