Lycamobile’s Unlimited UK 4G Mobile Broadband Comes with Restrictions

Mobile operator Lycamobile, which uses O2’s Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) platform, has launched a new 4G based top-up (UK Plan 12) that claims to offer 500 UK minutes with “unlimited” texts and data for just £12. Sounds good, until your connection gets throttled back to almost dialup speeds.

The only other network to offer unlimited style data in the United Kingdom is Three UK’s with its “all-you-can-eat” tariffs, although those who intend to use their Smartphone’s as a glorified modem (Tethering) for their desktop or laptop computers etc. are now separately capped to 2GB (GigaBytes) of usage (applies to new customers since late March).

So it’s perhaps of little surprise to find that Lycamobile, being a MVNO for another network that also can’t offer unlimited data, isn’t actually able to offer the claimed unlimited usage without imposing some restrictions.

Sadly Visitors to Lyca’s website will be hard pressed to find any mention of these restrictions (we tried but had no luck) but The Register did a little digging and discovered that the service is only “unlimited” for the first 10GB (GigaBytes) of usage and after that your Mobile Broadband speeds will be throttled all the way back to 2G style performance of 128Kbps (0.12Mbps). Ouch.