O2 shakes up postpay tariffs, iPhoners win big

O2 UK announced a shake up of its postpay consumer and small business tariffs on Tuesday, more than doubling the amount of minutes and texts included in the iPhone bundles.

The three current tariffs for iPhone will be overhauled from February 1 and will affect both new and existing iPhone owners.

Customers on a £35 per month contract will get three times more minutes and more than double the number of texts than before, while the introduction of a £45 tariff gives the same amount of minutes and texts as the former £55 tariff, saving customers £10. Alternatively, heavy users can go for the £75 tariff with a massive 3000 minutes and 500 texts a month.

All iPhone customers will continue to receive unlimited data browsing and access to The Cloud’s wifi hotspots as free bolt ons to their contract.

Good news for data users as well as O2 caps the daily rate for users browsing the web on their handsets at a flat £1. This means if a user browses more than 20-25 pages in a day, they will only be charged £1. Alternatively, regular data users can opt for the Unlimited Web Bolt On at £7.50 per month.

In a bid to make its tariffs more transparent, all O2’s plans tariffs for new and upgrading customers will be brought in line with six simple price points where customers simply choose the text and minute bundle which most suits them.

Customers can then customise their tariff by adding from a range of seven available £7.50 Bolt Ons, including unlimited data, unlimited O2 to O2 calls, unlimited anyone texts and unlimited weekend calls. Customers on a 600 minute or more tariff (equivalent to £35 on an 18 month contract) will get one Bolt On free.

“This industry is infamous for confusing consumers with the number and complexity of tariffs,” said Sally Cowdry, marketing director of O2 UK. “We’ve listened to what our customers want and acted, offering simple but competitive tariffs across all our handset range. The iPhone is already our fastest ever selling device and this added value will allow us to appeal to an ever greater segment of the market – it is an unbeatable proposition.”

Small business customers will also benefit from the number of available SME tariffs being reduced from 22 to 8, with each price point including unlimited O2 to O2 calls, unlimited calls to 10 nominated landline numbers, and unlimited O2 voicemail. Subscribers with linger term contracts will also receive discounts on their tariffs.