Vodafone and O2 launch 4G price plans

After a ten-month head start, EE finally faces some competition for 4G services from Vodafone and O2. We take a look at how their new tariffs stack up.

Vodafone and O2 have now launched their 4G mobile tariffs, which will bring some much needed competition to the sector.

Up until now, if you wanted access to 4G your only option was to go with EE. It has been the only network with the service since October last year – a ten-month head start on its rivals.

But EE (made up of T-Mobile and Orange) has been criticised for its expensive tariffs (one is as much as £81 a month) and limiting data allowances.  

So let’s take a look at what O2 and Vodafone are bringing to the 4G table.

O2 tariffs

O2 is now rolling out its 4G service in three cities: London, Bradford and Leeds. Ten more will be in-line for the service by the end of the year.

The network provider has launched two sets of plans; three deals on a 24-month airtime contract with O2 Refresh and three deals on O2 Simplicity which are 12-month SIM-only contracts.

The SIM-only plans don’t come with a handset and start from £26. The O2 Refresh deals start from £22 a month – but these are airtime-only plans and require you to get a 4G-ready handset deal separately, where prices start from £10 a month.

Read more in O2 Refresh: upgrade your mobile phone early for less.

O2’s deals come with unlimited minutes and texts, with data allowances of 1GB, 5GB or 8GB. But the beefier 5GB and 8GB deals are only available if you sign up before 31st October. Thereafter the allowances drop to 3GB and 5GB respectively.

As an incentive O2 is offering a 12-month subscription to O2 Tracks, which gives you access to the Official Top 40 songs in the UK as well as access to priority sports and exclusive online gaming. O2 says the music and sports video service will use up data, but online gaming is exempt.

Vodafone tariffs

In contrast Vodafone will only launch its service in London to start with, but claims 12 cities will be up and running on the network by the end of the year.

Vodafone is offering 12- and 24-month pay monthly contracts that come with 4G-ready handsets, as well as 12-month SIM-only deals.

12-month SIM-only deals start from £36 a month, 24-month plans which include a handset are available from £34 a month while the shorter 12-month version starts from £52 a month.

Like O2 all the plans on offer come with unlimited texts and minutes, and only differ by the data allowances.

Vodafone is offering 2GB, 4GB or 8GB allowances (double what is available on existing Red plans). But for the first three months of a deal customers will be given an unlimited data allowance which allows them to see how much they actually tend to use and adjust the deal accordingly.

Those that sign up or upgrade will get the choice of a free Sky Sports 1 & 2 Mobile TV streaming service or Spotify Premium membership for up to two years. They’re attractive incentives, but streaming music and live sports will count towards your data allowance.

How they compare

So how do the new deals from Vodafone and O2 compare with EE?  Below is a table showing how the 12-month SIM–only deals from each provider stack up.

When it comes to 4G services it’s all about the data allowance. So personally I am a bit disappointed by the offerings from Vodafone and O2.

For those on the hunt for unlimited broadband there is hope from Three.

Crucially this provider has pledged to not charge any extra for its 4G services. Read more about it in: Three to offer 4G at no extra cost.

Therefore its customers can enjoy unlimited data from as little as £15 a month from Three's all-you-can-eat data plan on the 12-month SIM-only deal. And because Three allows unlimited tethering you can spread your 4G service to other devices at no extra cost.

Three already has an ultrafast 3G network in place and has said it will launch its full 4G network by the end of the year.

After all 4G offers superfast speeds perfect for streaming and downloading things like films, TV shows or music, which can eat up an allowance fairly quickly.

Meanwhile O2 and Vodafone have been quite shrewd. They’ve both matched EE’s prices and thrown in some incentives, but only outdone the data allowance – if at all – by a small margin.

For £26 a month for example, O2 has matched EE’s 1GB allowance. And while Vodafone may have doubled the allowance on offer from EE, at 2GB it’s hardly a stretch.

Elsewhere on the £31 tier of contracts Vodafone’s 4GB offering only outdoes EE’s 3GB deal in a small way, while O2 matches EE again with 3GB unless customers sign up before the end of October, in which case they can get a much better 5GB.

Considering O2’s service is only being rolled out in three cities at launch, this caveat is sure to leave some customers in a catch-22 situation, where they rush to get the deal before the deadline, but have to wait for a long time before being able to use it.

4G battle

O2 and Vodafone seem to have the edge when it comes to 4G packages for now, but two factors might let them down.

Neither O2 nor Vodafone can support the iPhone 5 on their frequencies, leaving EE as the only provider that can.

But EE’s iPhone’s exclusivity will fall away when the new model is launched and with similar handsets available across the three network providers, for some choosing a 4G plan the decider will be network coverage.

EE has had a while to build up its coverage to nearly 100 towns and cities, while Vodafone and O2 will at launch only be able to cover one and three respectively.

But Vodafone and O2 seem determined to battle for customers, and aren’t about to go down without a fight. As well as incentives and slightly more data, both are offering to break some line rental contracts early and shoulder some of the cost.

O2 will pay 25% towards customers’ remaining line rental if they want to move mid-contract, which for those with a 4G-ready device makes the switch onto an O2 Refresh airtime contract much easier. Existing O2 Refresh contracts will allow you to upgrade at no extra cost.

O2 suggests trading in your old handset using its O2 Recycle service, where customers can get up to £300 to help pay off the remainder of their existing contract, or to put towards their next 4G-ready device.

Elsewhere any customer on a Vodafone Red deal can upgrade to the Red 4G-ready plan for an extra £5, giving them access to Spotify or the Sky Sports deal as well as double the amount of data they already have without having to sign up to a new contract. You just need to have a 4G compatible device.

And Vodafone has a special 4G Promise. Customers that have bought an iPhone 5 or a Samsung Galaxy SIII from Vodafone from September or October last year can bring them back and get 75% off the remaining cost of the plan as well as a new 4G-ready phone. The offer lasts until 31st December.  

Compare top mobile deals at Recombu. 

This article has been updated since its original publication

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