Giffgaff UK Launches New Travel Data Add Ons for Mobile Roaming
Mobile network provider giffgaff, which is owned by Telefónica and harnesses O2’s virtual operator (MVNO) platform in the UK, has today launched a new range of travel data (4G/5G mobile broadband) add-ons that will be available to customers who plan on roaming across any one of over 40 EU countries and several selected locations (e.g. USA, Turkey).
Existing giffgaff customers already benefit from up to 5 GigaBytes (data allowance) of inclusive roaming in the EU and selected destinations “at no extra cost“. But the new add-ons will offer an easy ability to boost this without falling back on excess charging (i.e. members are normally charged 10p/MB once 5GB is used).
The prices vary by add-on and location, but will come in usage increments of 1GB, 5GB or 10GB – each lasting for 30 days or until you use them up. The CEO of giffgaff, Ash Schofield, said: “At giffgaff we like to make life simple for our members. Our new travel data add-ons alongside our existing 5GB of inclusive EU roaming will remove the fear of running out of data whilst away, or being sprung with unexpected charges.”
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Giffgaff’s New Roaming Add-Ons
| Data Allowance | EU + selected Destinations |
China | Turkiye (Turkey) | USA | Switzerland |
| 1 GB | £4.00 | £15.00 | £6.00 | £6.00 | £15.00 |
| 5 GB | £8.00 | £30.00 | £12.00 | £12.00 | £30.00 |
| 10 GB | £12.00 | £45.00 | £18.00 | £18.00 | £45.00 |
Customers could alternatively consider just using a travel eSIM provider (if your Smartphone supports this), which are often able to sell you more data for less money. But this does come with some added complexity / admin hassle, which some people may prefer to avoid.
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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Good old Brexit, the gift that keeps giving.
Dry your eyes Steve
“Free” EU roaming is so 2018, fine for basic use but for anyone using their phone heavily esims are the future.
Meanwhile you can buy an esim for a fraction of that, specific to that country and get more data
Does GIffgaff support RCS for iphone?
Don’t know but RCS on iPhone honestly seems like a waste of time.
I’ve messaged two iPhone users through RCS (I use a Pixel) and both times it’s been an awful experience. One user on EE I could send messages to them through RCS but they’d reply back with SMS/MMS (so probably got charged). Another user on O2 it showed RCS was available but it gave up within 1 minute and resorted to SMS.
A quick search says no, they don’t support rcs for ios.
Yes
Yes
Prices seem to be cheaper than O2 (e.g. I think O2 was £9 for 1GB in Turkey and VOXI was something like 12p/MB), but I still think these prices need to be reduced
On the last comment, for the places that I visit an 3mobile PAYG nano sim has always given me enough data for £10 (usually actually less as I pick them up for cheap off of Amazon) but as my UK network is also PAYG and also a nano sim this has restricted my phone choices to dual sim phones only. It doesn’t seem that I’m missing out on much as the travel esims don’t seem to be good value in comparison.
I get my whole 30gb in Europe using Lebara