It’s always a dangerous phrase. Say “unlimited data” to potential customers and, love it or hate it, a number of them will really push that to the limit. That’s what MVNO TalkTalk are doing, in a giffgaff-esque 30-day SIM offering which offers unlimited everything for £12 per month.
Using the Vodafone network, TalkTalk are also keen to draw your attention to their fixed-line broadband services, delivering “100% totally unlimited broadband as standard on all packages” without any “download limits or slowing down at peak times”. They then point towards this new “All-in SIM”, which you slot into your existing mobile for worry-free browsing, calls and texts on a rolling monthly contract.
Sounds good, but there is a little gotcha in the T’s and C’s for the mobile offering, which will see “streaming movies to your phone, downloading large files to your phone or making excessive numbers of calls” getting penalised. This is slightly at odds with the broadband “totally unlimited” offer with “no slow down”, and could see you being asked to reduce usage or having your package revoked. There’s no tethering, and this is 3G data only – don’t expect 4G. Another little caveat? You have to be a TalkTalk customer already (mobile/landline/broadband) to get this. If you’re planning on watching streaming movies all day long, this probably isn’t for you. For everyone else though, this really does tick a lot of boxes.
Further details can be obtained on mobile.talktalk.co.uk. Despite being more attractive to existing and new TalkTalk customers, they’ve already grabbed a 13% market share of new SIM-only connections in March and they’ve got a lot of half-price deals on existing SIM-only plans too.