500,000 Vodafone UK Customers to Get Free Unlimited Data UPDATE
Mobile operator Vodafone UK has announced that they’re giving 500,000 of their Pay Monthly customers, plus NHS staff, 30-days free access to unlimited mobile data (mobile broadband). On top of that those flagged as being “vulnerable” can expected to be “proactively” upgraded to benefit.
Vulnerable customers eligible for this upgrade will receive a text message informing them of the change. Half a million other Vodafone Pay Monthly customers, not already on unlimited data plans, can also access the offer through the operator’s VeryMe rewards scheme (you must be registered for this in order to benefit) – available via their My Vodafone App.
The offer will initially be made available to the first 500,000 customers. “We will monitor usage and, if network capacity allows, it is our ambition to offer further passes to even more customers,” said Vodafone.
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The change is designed to give worry-free data usage to customers so they can keep in touch with loved ones using video calling; keep the kids learning with access to e-learning sites and keep the whole family entertained with great quality video streaming. Vodafone is also currently offering six months half price on its 24-month SIM only unlimited plans.
Nick Jeffery, Vodafone UK CEO, said:
“Our role in these difficult and worrying times is to keep the UK connected, even while we have to stay apart. We are offering 30 days of unlimited free data to our most vulnerable customers and the first 500,000 customers to sign up, to help ease any worries about running out of data or incurring additional charges.
If our network capacity allows, we would love to be able to offer this to even more customers and will be monitoring the feasibility of this. In short, if we have more to give, we will. This is one of a series of measures that we are taking to help. We have already expanded our networks, given our customers free access to NHS online services and reduced the time it takes to pay small suppliers.”
End.
UPDATE 2nd April 2020
The operator has just announced that it will be extending the 30-day free access to unlimited mobile data offer, by pro-actively upgrading customers who have personal Pay Monthly contracts and are registered in its systems as working for the NHS. These customers will receive a text informing them of this upgrade from April 6th.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Just to let you know Mark, EE are already in the process of doing this for a proportion of their customers (vulnerable).
I know because they’ve already applied it to my account.
Oh no.
I just left three for vodafone because three’s network was clearly overloaded to the point of unusable due to their blanket offers of unlimited data to all their customers.
Yes they are cheap but I struggled in my part of town to get 1mbps 4g download speed at all times.
Blanket or large scale offerings of unlimited data clearly overloads and slows the network as far as mobile broadband is concerned.
Just got a text from Vodafone and thought happy days.. but no, it was to tell me my contract is going up by 2.5% on the 30th march 🙁
Nice gesture, but since when do only the most vulnerable of customers need data to keep kids learning (using mobile handset data?) or watching the best quality streaming content?
Last I checked, isolation and lockdown practices affect everybody and if you’re talking about old people who are vulnerable because they’re over 70 why are they getting unlimited data when you can bet they’re the ones paying for 500MB and don’t have the first clue that you can facetime someone anyway.
I understand measures to help the most vulnerable with other things, like care, access to earlier shopping to get essentials etc, but I don’t feel the statement lines up. They lost me at e-learning and streaming. You can talk to someone on the phone and have the same level of contact as a video chat yet use no data so why not just make calls free for everybody?
If you’re vulnerable but can draw from a library of streaming content I.e.you pay a subscription to one or more streaming services, then you can afford the bloody data on your phone. If you can’t then you ought to be managing you or your carer should be better managing your finances. Sorry.