Virgin Media and O2 UK Offer Free Phone Calls and Data to the Middle East
Broadband and mobile giant Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) has announced that they will credit back the cost of calls, SMS messages and data (mobile broadband) to and from the UK to several countries in the Middle East, which will be backdated to 28th February and run until 7th March 2026 (although this may be extended).
The promotion, which reflects the problems being caused by ongoing events in that part of the world, will apply to customers of O2’s Pay Monthly and Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans, as well as those using Virgin Media’s Home Phone service. The following countries are covered by this: Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE.
“We want to help our customers stay in touch with their loved ones who are affected by the current situation in the Middle East … We appreciate this is a developing situation and we’ll continue to review the measures we have in place to support our customers,” said VMO2 in a brief statement.
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We wouldn’t be surprised if EE and VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) followed suit with a similar offer, although at the time of writing they don’t appear to have introduced one yet.
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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Note that this promotion does not inlcude Iran, the most affected country. This is almost certainly due to not wanting problems with being seen to be supporting a sanctioned regime.
Also, let’s see whether EE and VodafoneThree will offer their own promotions within the next couple of days.
This is due to having no-one roaming in Iran but will be regulary reviewed.