UK operator Vodafone has seen fit to make a big deal about offering data rollover for its PAYG customers but it’s largely a waste of time.

Scott Bicheno

December 13, 2016

1 Min Read
Vodafone HQ sign

UK operator Vodafone has seen fit to make a big deal about offering data rollover for its PAYG customers but it’s largely a waste of time.

The big innovation involves prepaid punters being able to add any data they haven’t used from a given monthly allowance onto their allowance for the following month. Pretty handy eh? The catch is, however, that the data surpluses don’t continue to accumulate, so you pretty much have to use it all up that following month or you still lose it. Since people tend to use roughly the same amount of data each month that means this offer is of limited use.

Vodafone is not the first to have this bright idea; Virgin Mobile has the same offer, with the same limitations, but Vodafone seems to have rolled over a fair bit of marketing budget into Q4 and clearly has to use it or lose it in 2016. Hence the company’s over-reaction to managing joint first-place in a recent performance test.

In a bid to cut through tariff gimmickery such as this, as well as it being mid-December and news is thin on the ground, your intrepid correspondent decided to spend half the day collating SIM-only deals from the leading UK mobile operators in the table below, which we will strive to update on a regular basis.

It’s often difficult to find direct equivalence between tariffs so we discounted voice, which has become increasingly irrelevant, but strived for equivalence in voice bundles where possible. While there is variation between operators there are no obvious clear winners, so as ever it comes down to shopping for your individual needs.

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About the Author(s)

Scott Bicheno

As the Editorial Director of Telecoms.com, Scott oversees all editorial activity on the site and also manages the Telecoms.com Intelligence arm, which focuses on analysis and bespoke content.
Scott has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over ten years. Prior to Telecoms.com Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics’. Before that Scott was a technology journalist, covering the PC and telecoms sectors from a business perspective.
Follow him @scottbicheno

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