O2 Cuts Classic Pay-As-You-Go Mobile Charges to Match Three UK

Mobile operator O2 will tomorrow cut the charges on their Classic Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) SIM from 5p a min calls, 5p a text and 5p per Megabyte of data (Mobile Broadband) to just 3p a min for calls, 2p a text and 1p per MB, which matches Three UK’s allegedly “unbeatable” pricing.

However we should point out that O2 will still require a minimum top-up of £10, while Three UK drops this to just £5 if you top-up online or by phone. On top of that Three UK will also throw in 10MB of extra data each time you top up, although O2 does counter this by offering 5% credit per top-up back for the first 3 months (this rises to 10% after 6 months via their Rewards scheme).

As usual customers will still be able to buy a bundle of mins, texts and data instead of the classic charge per use approach, although the downside of this method is that the bundled allowances you get tend to expire after 30 days and that can often make the classic approach more attractive for casual users (especially if you don’t use much data).