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Is the £5 for 500mb data top-up on PAYG 4G or just 3G?

Kevin0805
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Any PAYG experts here?  Does anyone know if the £5 for 500mb data PAYG top-up is actually 4G data? Or just 3G?

 

Vodafone's website emphasises that for monthly auto-top-up bundles it's 4G, but seems silent on whether it's also 4G on PAYG? Which makes me thing it might just be 3G for PAYG (but they don't want to adversities that!).

 

Thanks.

12 REPLIES 12

BandOfBrothers
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

It will be for 4g too on a 4G Tariff. 

 

As long as your using a 4G Compatible Handset , with a 4G SIM card ,and in a 4G catchment Area. 

 

 

Current Phone  >

Samsung Galaxy s²³ Ultra 512gb Phantom Black.

 

 

Thanks bandofbothers1.

 

You say "on a 4G Tariff". But I'm not on any regular monthly tariff.  I'm just on Pay As You Go, with no regular monthly subscription payment or contract.

 

Is that what you mean - for this sort of PAYG its still 4G (with the right phone, SIM, catchment)?

 

Thanks again.

BandOfBrothers
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

You're welcome. 

 

As long as your phone is 4G compatible and 4G is toggled on in its settings and SIM card is 4G and in a 4G area I see no reason why your phone wouldn't seek out the fastest connection. 

 

Which phone are you using ?

 

Or Have you experienced / seen the 4G speeds / icon in the phones status bar on your phone thus far ? 

 

The Top up just adds extra data to allow further data connection instead of paying the daily fee for usage. 

Current Phone  >

Samsung Galaxy s²³ Ultra 512gb Phantom Black.

 

 

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

I have the old Text & Web Freebie. If I have my SIM card in a phone that is 4G-capable, I get 4G on the very rare occasions that I'm in a 4G area.

 

I'm not going to go hunting for an exact date, but at some point earlier this year 4G became available "as standard" on PAYG. If there are still some pages that don't make that clear, either they've been missed, or it wasn't seen as very relevant.

 

I'm not sure - are SIMs 4G and non-4G? My card must be fairly old, but that doesn't seem to hold it back.

 

Edited to add: Presumably you're looking at the Extra Data here? Something to be aware of with the Extras is that they renew automatically on expiry, unless you opt out during the lifetime of your current Extra. There's extra info on managing Extras here.

BandOfBrothers
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

@Annie_N wrote:

I'm not sure - are SIMs 4G and non-4G? My card must be fairly old, but that doesn't seem to hold it back.


 

Hello Annie_N

 

I try to remember advising about the type of SIM card because I have spoken to people in the past who still are using an older SIM card which is 3G compliant ,as they haven't needed to change for any reason. Older SIM cards ie  Pre Micro or Nano SIM Cards wont work on Vodafone 4G. 

Current Phone  >

Samsung Galaxy s²³ Ultra 512gb Phantom Black.

 

 

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

Yes, quite possibly my SIM is sufficiently recent that it was 4G-compliant, although I've certainly had it since well before 4G (and 4G phones) became widely available.

 

Edited in response to your edit, @BandOfBrothers! The SIM I have in mind is a relatively early micro SIM, but it must be sufficiently recent to have been manufactured to modern standards.

Thanks Annie_N.  I think I read in the small print that the Freebie data cannot be used in conjunction with PAYG.  I'd have to subscribe to a monthly auto-renewing Bunble to be able to benefit from any Freebie.

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

@Kevin0805 

 

I think there may be some confusion over the meaning of PAYG! It's used in a fairly wide generic way, to mean anything that doesn't involve a Pay Monthly contract and the long-running financial commitment that you enter into by that route.

 

So the Big Value Bundles, the top-up Freebies (Freebie tab of same link), and the £5 Extras are all part of PAYG, in the sense that you can terminate them any time you like without penalty. But obviously they are a little different from the good old-fashioned basic PAYG, where you simply put a sum of money onto your phone, and used it piecemeal to pay for calls, texts, or even data. The advent of smartphones, and the growth of mobile phone use generally, means that all the networks now offer packages of one sort or another (the variety is bewildering) which are technically PAYG in that you can simply stop, but offer discounts of one sort or another for greater usage, and some involve subtle hooks so that you don't want to lose a benefit by stopping!

 

I was about to hit Post, when I realised what you had perhaps read - the top-up Freebies can't be held at the same time as the Big Value Bundle. You can only have one of the BVB and the assorted Freebies at a time; they all offer a good discount on buying piecemeal, so it wouldn't be economically viable to let people get a Freebie by topping up, then use the same money to buy a BVB! So people who use a fair bit of all three core components will want a BVB, but people who mainly use just one component may be better suited by the relevant Freebie.

 

So, within limits, the world is your oyster on PAYG! I hope this helps?

Fantastic explanation, Annie_N.  Thanks.  But as you say it really is bewildering the number and complexity of the different packages, etc.  And here we're only talking about one provider: Vodafone.  No wonder people struggle to make sense of whether they would be better off with a different plans and/or provider.  Not helped by the comparison websites being brought into disrepute because of their "sponsorship" arrangements, etc.