Vodafone UK Donates 500,000 Free Mobile Data SIMs to Public
Mobile network operator Vodafone UK has today announced that they’ve reached the halfway point of their commitment to connect 1 million people, specifically those who are “experiencing digital exclusion“, by the end of 2022. Some 500,000 free mobile data (broadband) and calling SIMs have now been donated to the public.
The programme provides people with a free SIM with 20GB (GigaBytes) of data (mobile broadband) a month, for 6 months – plus unlimited calls and texts – through a network of charity partners. The figure of 500,000 was reached through Vodafone’s partnerships with related charities, such as The Trussell Trust, Barnardo’s and the Good Things Foundation, as well as the huge number of charities that are part of its charities.connected programme.
As well as its everyone.connected campaign, Vodafone also offers a £10 per month VOXI For Now “social tariff” to anyone claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, Disability Allowance, Personal Independent Payment, Employment and Support Allowance, or employment-based Universal Credit.
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The tariff itself includes unlimited data, calls and texts, but this only lasts for up to 6 months and after that they’ll switch you over to their standard £10 a month plan, where you’ll still have access to unlimited social media, calls and texts, as well as and the flexibility to change, pause, or cancel at anytime.
UK breakdown of where the free SIMs have been provided
| North West | 57,308 |
| Northern Ireland | 6,221 |
| West Midlands | 21,924 |
| Wales | 20,524 |
| South West | 22,615 |
| Scotland | 70,424 |
| North East & Yorkshire | 38,403 |
| East & East Midlands | 55,082 |
| London | 139,407 |
| South East | 68,186 |
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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I pay £8 a month for 15gb. I guess if you’re using their sim for home computing the £10 might be good value. However still seems odd they have a £10 plan for those on low incomes.
Now we know who’s been using up all the bandwidth! 😉
If only their network was better, I might not be moving from Virgin.
You might wont read this as Virgin piggy back off lot of networks.
Virgin Media is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) – an operator that don’t have any mobile phone masts and, instead, piggybacks off the signal provided by one of the four providers that do (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone)
@FrogCF
that’s not how MVNOs, Virgin used EE, then their contract expired so they made a new contract for all their customers to be moved onto Vodafone. Then they merged with O2 and now all the virgin customers are being transferred to O2. EE was 1999-2020, Vodafone was 2020-2022 and O2 is 2022-current.
At no point in time did they piggyback off multiple networks.
So for 6 months it is free then pay £10 month … that is one way of boosting profits as someone who doesn’t have that in the beginning ends up paying £10 month more than they were before doing it …. so ends up costing you more in the end, as per usual … get nothing for nothing nowadays .. it is all about boosting profits by any means available