Mobile Operator O2 UK Quietly Discontinues Pay As You Go Data SIMs
Some customers of O2 UK’s (Virgin Media) Pay As You Go Data SIMs (mobile broadband) have recently been surprised to find that they can no longer top their plans up with extra data. The reason for this appears to be because the mobile operator quietly removed them from sale during early August 2024.
Just to recap. O2’s PAYG Data SIMs allowed customers to choose from a selection of plans, each with a different allowance and expiry period. For example, you could pay £3 for 1GB (GigaByte) but that had to be used within a 24-hour period, or alternatively you’d pay £10 for 2GB lasting 90 days, then £20 for 8GB lasting 90 days or £30 for 12GB that lasted for 12-months.
The plans had some advantages for those who only needed infrequent access to data, and you can still buy preloaded O2 data SIMs via Amazon, but by modern standards they perhaps weren’t particularly good value for money and these days data-only SIMs can feel a bit redundant (i.e. it’s often cheaper to simply buy a regular mobile SIM and just not use the calls/texts side).
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However, if you visit the same page on O2’s website today, then the operator simply says, “we no longer sell data only SIMs for Pay As You Go” and directs customers to take one of their Pay Monthly or regular PAYG mobile SIMs instead (oddly this is done alongside the picture of a 5G SIM, but PAYG on O2 doesn’t support 5G). Credits to Julian for spotting this development.
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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O2 letting down pay as you go customers again.
I have a sneaking suspicion that by this time next year, O2 Pay as you go will be disappearing in general. They’ve started to call PAYG customers to try and persuade them onto contracts for as little as £4 per month. And their pay as you go network is still running on an old system that has no VoLTE, No WiFi calling, and no 5G.
I don’t know if they’ll just pull the plug altogether like they did with Virgin Mobile PAYG, or phase it out gradually and start off just by stopping new sales, or migrate PAYG customers over to the giffgaff brand for example. But their days feel numbered now.
I doubt it because it’s entry level mobile. There are groups of people who need it like people poor credit files,bankrupts,children,drug dealers and immigrants who have just moved here as well as tourist who prefer to use local sims then there are the groups of people who refuse to have contracts or are too stubborn to change.
They could redirect people to Giffgaff or Tesco Mobile, I suppose it would strengthen the relationship with Tesco even though they’ve just signed a new 10 year deal.
Closing O2 Pay & Go would only send people over to EE who would take advantage of it with a new marketing campaign. If you say a year, we would by then known the outcome of the Vodafone and Three merger.
By how quietly O2 shut down the Pay & Go data sim base, I would say it was very tiny and they would have weighed up the pros and cons of closing it, people who depended on it may have spent more money than they would have done on a contract or simply using a Pay & Go phone sim which again is one tiny minority
The sim cards never get disconnected, I did not use mine for over 3 years, I actually lost it and found it, normal sims get disconnected after 6 months or so of inactivity
The O2 Pay & Go data sims were created and designed to compete with BT Wifi (Formerly BT Openzone) which is why the bundles are similar with one advantage that you could buy 90 day or even a 12 month bundle.
Things have changed since their introduction and data allowances have become bigger and cheaper with many people using mobile hotspot, sure there will be a small minority of people who do not get a monthly data allowance but you cannot keep a service for a very small number of people.
Yes they do, I followed the letter of their usage requirements (on classic one chargeable event every six months) and they disconnected it. Called to get it reactivated and credit restored, they said it’s because it wasn’t topped up every month. I said it didn’t have to be topped up regularly, only a chargeable six monthly event was required.
Fast forward six months and they cut it off again for the same reason. I complained to their second tier team and I have an email from them confirming they were wrong to do this.
There’s several instances of classic PAYG being disconnected on forums, you have to watch them.
Send O2 have been very misleading lately.
I still think there’s a new for data only plans.
The new player in town is Y Mobile. They only do data only plans. Just thought I’d mention it.
Still on legacy PAYG 02 sim which I only top up 2 or 3 times a year so max £30 annual for my use.
The bundles or contract offered by 02 now would be twice that and I dislike those that
expire after a month.
Actually about time that this slowly happened.
Modern data use now far outstrips most of the offerings on PAYG, and the data only bundles on PAYG are laughable at best £25 for a 15gb data bundle on PAYG compared to potentially unlimited data use on most 4g mifi monthly hotspots for the same price.
Plus the amount of heartache that’s caused when the PAYG bundle goes wrong and it eats the credit as opposed to the data bundle means it’s a pain in the rear to fix. (Seriously if you haven’t ever been in that position and been on the receiving end of someone who blamed the system because they weren’t watching what they were doing?! Ai-yah!)
PAYG data Sims should never have been introduced in the first place imo.
And yes it’s only a matter of time that PAYG as a whole is shutdown as it is very costly for networks to run and maintain that service, especially when there are people out there who easily mess up the services they have because they don’t leave settings and features alone.
o2 and the other MNO’s I think will move all PAYG to there MVNO offerings, so o2 to giffgaff, etc
PAYG is a loss leader anyway, so cant blame them for trying to get rid, or move people onto sudo monthly contracts with minimum monthly popups..