UK Mobile Brand The People’s Operator Returns After Going Bust in 2019
One of our readers has spotted (here) that mobile operator TPO (The People’s Operator) appears to be in the process of gearing up for a relaunch into the UK market, which may come as a surprise to many after the original company went bust in early 2019 (here) – disrupting services for around 15,000 customers in the process.
The revived brand appears to be backed by Uplands Mobiles (Uplands Onetelco Ltd) and aims to “encourage reusing, recycling, and refurbishing mobile devices to cut down on e-waste” (i.e. offering customers cash to recycle their old gadgets), while also committing to contribute “10% of our profits … to causes you care about“.
The refreshed brand has been live online for a while, but they recently added a wait list for their mobile service. “Our wait list is now live. Join today and be first to experience the new TPO eSIM with an amazing founder deal, transparent values, and connectivity that does good,” said the service via social media in October 2025.
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The only eSIM plan currently being promoted for this appears to be promising unlimited calls, text and data (mobile broadband) for £15 per month via an eSIM on a 30-day rolling contract. But there’s also vague talk of a “transparent fair usage” policy, which will apparently only be used for “extreme misuse, with notice“. At present, it’s unclear what mobile network (MVNO) this will harness, although the site uses the plural “networks“, suggesting it may be a UK roaming style plan.
The big question now is, once it does finally launch, whether consumers will still trust the brand after the last attempt failed.
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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What would help prevent ewaste is having application providers support older phones (looking at you, linkedin and slack; acknowledging that both have a somewhat flaky mobile web version that does not cover all features).
And having VOLTE support from networks on a wider range of older devices (where the device supports VOLTE but the network does not support the device for VOLTE, e.g. Blackberry Key2–looking at you Three, on this one)
And having phone manufacturers that supplied upgrades for longer (over conservative view of hardware capability driving planned obsolescence and an upgrade cycle)
As a proof of concept you’re right, but app developers are tied to Google’s API hence why older phones don’t get supported after some OS update…
They seem to be doing something similar to Giff Gaff, which is kinda nice but if they don’t get the user base above a certain amount it won’t be around for long!
I believe they were a mobile network used by people on dole money years back with bad credit. They used EE then and after they went bust they offer customers a SMARTY deal.
“Networks” could simply mean they’re using MOCN for access to Three and Vodafone, if indeed they are an MVNO of one of them.
Given that they never actually made a profit they might as well have committed to giving 100% to charity
Another lost cause. These MVNOs are cheap for a reason. Once I got a Lebara SIM to try out. I never handed out the number publicly and most days I would get two spam calls. Meaning that they make their money by selling on your personal details. For that and many other reasons I ll stick with a major provider.