O2 UK Starts Putting WiFi Calling Live on Pay As You Go Mobile Plans
Some customers of mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media), specifically those on their Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans, this week began to notice the sudden appearance of Wi-Fi Calling on their service (ISPreview Forum) and 4G Calling (VoLTE) is also expected to follow by the end of this year.
O2’s PAYG plans have long lacked support for 5G (mobile broadband), WiFi Calling (Voice over WiFi) and 4G Calling (Voice over LTE). But earlier this month that all started to change after the operator finally began to deploy 5G support (here) and they now seem to be in the process of adding WiFi Calling too. A spokesperson for VMO2 confirmed to ISPreview that they were indeed “starting to roll this service out in phases to our customer base“.
Just to recap. VoWiFi enables consumers with a supporting Smartphone and mobile operator to harness their home broadband connection, or another WiFi network, to make mobile voice calls (and sometimes also texts), instead of using your mobile (2G, 4G or 5G) network. The feature is extremely useful, particularly when away from a good mobile signal, but support can still be patchy between different networks and devices.
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The change is not unexpected as the operator recently confirmed, as part of their 3G switch-off strategy, that “4G & WiFi calling will be available for Pay As You Go customers by the end of 2025“. But it often takes several months for such phased deployments to reach completion, thus starting that process around now does make sense (i.e. if they hope to deliver it by the end of the year).
The catch is that some of those PAYG customers who initially reported seeing VoWiFi going live have since seen it disappear again, which will hopefully be rectified as their deployment continues. As for 4G Calling, we haven’t seen any signs of that one yet, but historically VoWiFi and VoLTE have tended to be deployed at around the same time by other operators (VoLTE just allows calls to go via 4G instead of the older 2G network).
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 to hear. Hopefully feeds over to Tesco Mobile PAYG too.
I guess they had to do something if they are planning a 2G switch-off next year, otherwise PAYG customers would be dead in the water.
You would have thought the mobile networks would want to encourage wifi calling as much as possible. Anything that frees up capacity on the cellular networks has got got to be a good thing?
that would discourage people from getting a contract though.
“that would discourage people from getting a contract though.”
How? Surely being able to make more calls is more likely to encourage people to get a contract.
I would say enabling instead of “putting”
There’s a licence fee for the WiFi calling software at the server end. So it isn’t just an enabling/switch option for the Mobile Operator or NVNO.
It’s an option in the client (mobile users mobile handset). Obviously only an option if your network provider supports it.
I’ve no idea of the cost of the licence (s), or how they apply that fee, but it’ll be a function of total users enabled, seats live at a time, volume discount etc.
This is why it was initially only supported at the high end providers.
As a user with next to no chance of a ever getting a mobile signal at home, I’ve followed this closely. For a while.
I think it was Orange that first supported it in the UK market, each year or two I’d hollowly threaten to leave for a cheaper deal, when, in reality, we were stuck with whatever they wanted to charge us (and have reception).
All implementations aren’t equal, I recently tried SPUSU, but WiFi calling was unreliable. On my wife’s iPhone it would disable on the handset during a call, we tried resolving this with they with no success. Switching to 1p, both on EE, it was immediately flawless. Obviously the MVNO can configure it differently (it at least incorrectly).
Spusu uses its own IMS system for what it’s worth. Same for Lyca/Slice on EE too. I think everything else on EE should just use the default IMS (the only other MVNO with a custom implementation is Sky).
Orange were indeed very early to the WiFi Calling game.
I had a company Nokia C3 in 2011 to on Orange that supported it.
I don’t think it was the same implementation as today’s WiFi Calling though.
Orange’s version of WiFi calling was advertised as “UMA” and I believe it wasn’t just software based on the client side. For a device to work it had to have hardware support.
Blackberry’s supported it but only if it was Orange branded. Otherwise you had to go into the engineering menu and manually fill in their server settings that were absent in the standard firmware. Did that on mine.
Any chance this might make its way to Classic PAYG accounts?
Yesterday I had to help topup a phone for someone on Tesco mobile. During the call it gave a message about “3G being switched off” yet the phone (an Iphone 14 so no excuse for VoLTE compatibility issues) was using 3G. Honestly I really don’t understand how Tesco/O2 still exist in 2025. I knew they were last to the 4G party but I’d didn’t realise they were still relying on 3G in major cities.
I don’t know what O2 are doing behind the scenes but I briefly was able to turn WiFi Calling on my iPhone with my payg sim once this news was announced for a few days later to turn itself back off and a message saying contact my provider to enable it now. Poor show O2.