The sim only deals on offer from o2 are designed to give you a great allowance of calls, texts and/or web access every month in varying amounts depending on the plan you choose.
Defining Simplicity
Working under the ‘Simplicity’ range, sim only packages come with minimum term contracts of either 30 days or 12 months, and as you might expect, you can get significantly more for your money when you opt for a 12 month plan compared to a 30 day plan with the same monthly fee. They also compare well to the prepay plans that you can read about in our free pay as you go o2 sim card section because you are committing to a minimum term rather than topping up ad-hoc.
A Wide Range Of Prices For A Wide Range Of Mobile Plans
The deals on offer start at £11, and range up to £36 for a single month commitment and unlimited calls, data and a couple of gigabytes of web access – more than most people use!
You can see the full rundown of the packages on the o2 website by clicking here, or if you would like more information, read on.
Four Flavours Of Simplicity
The mobile market is somewhat more complex than it was a few years ago, so rather than offer too many similar tariffs which look confusing, they’ve been separated into four groups, which o2 call ‘Standard Phone’, ‘Smartphone’, ‘iPhone’ and ‘Blackberry’. This means you can restrict what you see to only include the plans that are designed for the handset you will be using on o2, as you don’t get a handset unlike with a standard contract.
Factor In Your Bonuses When Choosing A Deal
Depending on the plan you choose, you’ll get bonuses too on top of your standard allowances (apart from the high end ones – there would be little point offering extra free texts on an unlimited minutes contract!)
You’ll also see that the 12 month contracts come with a ‘one month early upgrade’ option, which means that if you stick with o2, you can change plan after 11 months instead of the full 12 month term requirement.
Slicing And Dicing To See Only The Sim Only Plans You Want
What’s particularly clever about o2’s website is that not only can you limit your plans list to one of the four types of phone listed above, but also specify minimum criteria for minutes, texts, data and contract length, so you can be sure that you’re looking at the plans that fully meet your needs rather than trying to cross reference between screens – something that we’ve all been driven mad by on poorly laid out sites!
Beware The Inflation Price Rises
The standard disclaimer that seems now to apply to all mobile phone contracts is in force too – that the prices aren’t fixed. This presumably refers to the fact that all the networks now seem to consider it reasonable to increase your plan fee even during the minimum term so long as it doesn’t exceed inflation. This caused a huge stir in 2011 and 2012 when the big companies chose to enforce it for the first time, and customers were outraged, having been under the impression that the fees were fixed. Perhaps this will be a permanent fixture in mobile contracts, or perhaps one will realise the PR opportunity and jump in with a truly fixed price contract. Either way, you need to know it’s in there for now!
Other Items Of Note
As with most of the networks, the o2 sim only plans don’t include picture messaging, so be prepared to see a 35p charge on your bill for each one you send. A good tip is that you can usually send the photos from your camera via email from your handset instead of as a MMS picture message, so that would fall under any inclusive data allowance.
Finally, if you’ve used o2 before, you might have had access to the BT Openzone network across the country to connect to via wifi. This has now changed to give you access to the o2 network instead, which are equally omnipresent, but make sure you’re trying to connect to the right network to get online!
So, if you fancy a closer look at the o2 sim only plans, here’s that link again to check out the features and prices.
