Tesco launches flexible 4G for just £2.50 extra a month

You can now try 4G with Tesco Mobile’s ‘flexi-bendi’ tariffs. We check out how they compare.

Tesco Mobile is now offering 4G for only £2.50 extra a month to new and existing customers.

The provider - which piggybacks off O2’s network - is the first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to offer superfast mobile broadband.

However, Tesco Mobile will have the same coverage as O2, so users will be only be able to get access to 4G in London, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester and Sheffield. By the end of 2013 there will be coverage in Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh.

The operator says that it recognises that 4G won’t suit all of its customers so is giving them flexibility to try 4G at their own pace using ‘flexi-bendi’ tariffs.

4G will function like a bolt-on, where new and existing users can add or remove it at any time and adjust their data limits up or down to suit their needs.

These flexible rules will apply to Tesco Mobile’s SIM-only deals and Anytime Upgrade contracts with data available from 500MB to 3GB.

Tesco’s 4G deals

So what will Tesco’s 4G deals cost?

Below is a table showing how much Tesco's 3G SIM-only deal will cost once a 4G bolt-on is added.

*Limited offers

With a 4G enabled SIM-only deal you can expect to pay from £10 up to £22.50 with Tesco Mobile.

If you want to get a 4G-ready smartphone included though you will need to take a look at the Anytime Upgrade contracts.

These deals all last 24 months and separate the cost of airtime from the cost of the handset. They are meant to make mid-contract upgrades cheaper as you only pay for the outstanding cost of the phone if you want to switch, rather than both the remaining cost of airtime and the handset.

Below are the general Tesco Mobile airtime plans which you can pair with a phone plan of your choice on Anytime Upgrade.

*Total monthly cost depends on handset chosen.

The cost of the deal will depend on the 4G handset you go for.

Tesco is offering 4G services on the HTC One, Nokia Lumia 925, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Sony Xperia SP. Handsets cost between £10 and £20.50 a month though none of the plans require any upfront payments.

One of the cheapest deals is available with the Nokia Lumia 920. If you go for this model you will pay £10.50 a month for the handset and £9.50 a month for the 4G airtime, bringing the total monthly cost to £20. Not bad for a 4G-ready handset on a 4G-enabled contract, with no up-front cost.

How Tesco compares

At the moment Tesco Mobile is up against EE, Vodafone and O2 which are the only other networks to offer 4G services.

Below are the cheapest SIM-only deals from each of the providers Tesco has to compete against.

*Apply before 31st October to get 6GB for the same price

As you can see Tesco is the cheapest, but you get significantly less compared to the comparable cheapest deals from other providers.

EE, Vodafone and O2 all offer unlimited minutes and texts and - apart from EE - more data. However, to match Vodafone’s top 2GB of data you would only have to spend £5 more with Tesco Mobile, which is still significantly cheaper than the rest.

Below is a table showing the cheapest pay monthly deal, where a handset comes with no upfront cost, from the main 4G providers.

To get a 4G handset with no upfront cost Tesco is the cheapest deal to go for, but again the deal is lacking when it comes to minutes and texts.

Unlocking 4G

4G is slowly becoming more affordable.

EE (a partnership between Orange and T-Mobile) had a ten-month head start on rivals when it launched in October last year so could get away witch charging a premium for the speedier connection. But the launch of O2 and Vodafone’s 4G services in August this year has shaken things up a bit.

Last week EE became the first network to launch 4G on pay as you go. Read: EE launches pay-as-you-go 4G plans from £3 a month for more. And from December Three has promised to launch 4G at no extra cost. Plus Tesco's move could kick-start other MVNO's like Sainsbury's Mobile and Asda Mobile into bringing out competitive 4G deals too.

However, coverage remains an issue, which may prevent people getting the best deal.

EE has the widest coverage and is able to provide 4G service in over 100 towns and cities. But other providers have significantly less and are playing catch-up.

Make sure you're not paying over the odds for 4G with Recombu

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