Budget networks information
A full information sheet on giffgaff, SMARTY, iD Mobile, VOXI, Lebara and 1pMobile: whose masts each rents, what the lower price removes, plans, eSIM, roaming, costs and switching.
Sections on this page
The facts
- Mast owners in the UK
- Four
- Brands renting from them
- Eight covered here
- Signal difference
- None
- Price difference
- Substantial
- Complaints go to
- Whoever bills you
What it means for you
Four companies own mobile infrastructure in Britain. Everybody else buys capacity wholesale and resells the same radio waves under a different name.
| Mast owner | Brands renting its signal |
|---|---|
| EE | 1pMobile |
| O2 | Tesco Mobile, giffgaff, Sky Mobile |
| Three | SMARTY, iD Mobile |
| Vodafone | VOXI, Lebara |
One sentence covers the whole arrangement: the landlord decides your coverage; the brand decides your price, your support and how soon you get new features. Complaints always go to whoever sends the bill.
The facts
- Radio waves
- Identical to the landlord
- Coverage maps to use
- The landlord’s
- At saturated masts
- Landlord’s customers may take priority
- Everyday effect
- Rarely noticeable
- Testing
- One rolling month
What it means for you
A cheaper brand is not a weaker network. The transmissions are the same ones the landlord’s own customers are using.
The one technical caveat: at genuinely saturated masts, the owner’s customers can be given priority over rented traffic. In ordinary use this is invisible, but it is honest to mention it.
The facts
- Usual term
- Rolling monthly
- Handset finance
- Generally unavailable
- Credit checks
- Usually none on rolling SIMs
- Unlimited tiers
- On some brands
- Spend caps
- Free everywhere
What it means for you
Most of these brands sell rolling monthly bundles and nothing else — which is an advantage, because there is nothing to unwind if you change your mind.
Handset finance is generally unavailable, so phones are bought outright. That is not a drawback: outright phone plus a cheap SIM is usually the lowest total cost available anywhere in the market.
The brands, one at a time:
giffgaff (O2) — entirely online with a member community and no phone lines, by design. Consistently competitive on mid-size allowances and the cheapest reliable way to test O2’s coverage.
SMARTY (Three) — run by Three itself, so it carries the host’s full performance including its speed advantage in towns. A deliberately simple rolling grid.
iD Mobile (Three) — a retailer’s brand competing hardest on price per gigabyte, with data rollover on some tiers. Satisfaction scores have trailed the leaders in some years, so keep things in writing.
VOXI (Vodafone) — leaves selected social and video apps out of the allowance, which can hugely increase usable data. Check the current exempt list before buying; it changes.
Lebara (Vodafone) — built around international calling on cheap rolling plans. Check the specific countries you ring, not the headline count.
1pMobile (EE) — charges per minute, text and megabyte on the widest network in Britain. Unbeatable for very light use, expensive quickly above that.
The facts
- Support
- Widely available on recent plans
- Uniformity
- Varies brand by brand
- Check
- Your exact handset
- Cost
- Nothing, ever
- Number transfer
- Ordinary free code
What it means for you
eSIM support is broad but not uniform — several of these brands added it after the mast owners, and it can still depend on your handset model. Check before you order rather than after.
- Open the official app — never a link someone sent you.
- Request the eSIM and follow the on-screen activation.
- Keep your number with the ordinary free switching code; digital and plastic are treated identically.
- For travel, add a cheap local data eSIM and leave your UK line for calls.
The facts
- Offered by these brands
- Generally not
- Where to look instead
- The mast owners or a fixed-line provider
- Relationship to mobile signal
- None
- Bundling
- Not a feature here
- What you gain instead
- Lower mobile prices
What it means for you
These are mobile propositions. Broadband, where you need it, comes from a fixed-line provider or from one of the mast owners — and it is a separate decision entirely, decided by your street rather than by your phone signal.
What you give up in bundling you get back in a lower monthly mobile price, which for most single-service households is the better trade.
The facts
- Roaming terms
- The brand’s own, not the landlord’s
- Do not assume
- Anything carries across
- Ceiling
- Applies wherever you go
- Read
- Your own roaming screen
- At sea
- Outside all protection
What it means for you
Roaming follows the brand’s own terms, never the landlord’s, even though the signal is identical. This trips people up constantly — read your own roaming screen and treat the landlord’s European policy as irrelevant to you.
- Read your roaming screen before you book, and write the ceiling down as a number.
- Check the spend cap is on.
- Turn off automatic backups and app updates over mobile data.
- Past a few days away, buy a local data eSIM and keep the UK line for calls.
The facts
- Unlimited at home
- Genuinely unmetered
- Tethering
- Capped on some plan generations
- Very heavy users
- Briefly queued at busy masts
- Abroad
- Ceiling, then per-GB
- Typical over-buying
- Around double
What it means for you
On the phone, at home, unlimited means unlimited on all four mast owners. Three published conditions bend it, and every one is readable before you sign.
| Condition | What it actually does |
|---|---|
| Tethering cap | Limits sharing data with a laptop on some plan generations |
| Traffic management | Queues extreme outliers at saturated masts; normal heavy use never notices |
| Fair use abroad | Ends the unlimited part at a published figure |
Before buying any allowance, read three months of real usage in your current app. People routinely buy about twice what they use. Two free changes usually remove the need for a bigger tier: drop streaming quality one notch, and push backups and updates onto home Wi-Fi.
The facts
- Usual structure
- Rolling monthly, no deposit
- Most common rise
- An introductory rate stepping up
- Cheapest correction
- Simply moving
- Spend cap
- Free
- Yearly figure
- Monthly × 12
What it means for you
Because most plans here are rolling and phones are bought outright, the yearly figure is unusually easy to work out — and unusually easy to reduce.
| Figure | What to make of it |
|---|---|
| Introductory rate | Very common here; note when it ends |
| Standard rate | Your real ongoing cost |
| Sibling brand’s price | Same masts, often very different price — always compare |
| Yearly cost | Monthly × 12, with no deposit to add |
| Spend cap | Free; set it the day the SIM activates |
The facts
- Mid-term rises
- Stated in pounds and pence before signing
- Rule since
- January 2025
- Most common rise
- A discount quietly ending
- Falls
- Only when you act
- Escalation
- Free at eight weeks
What it means for you
Bills go up for five reasons, all of them printed before you signed:
| Reason | Behind it |
|---|---|
| A mid-term increase | Disclosed in pounds and pence at the point of sale since January 2025 |
| The introductory discount ending | Its length was stated when you bought |
| Going past your allowance | Only possible if no spend cap was set |
| A minimum term ending | Not a rise — a fall that did not happen |
| An add-on renewing | One-off purchases sometimes repeat |
And down for five, none of which happen by themselves:
| Move | Effect |
|---|---|
| Switch to SIM-only when the term ends | Strips out the phone payment |
| Cut the allowance | If three months of usage says the tier is too big |
| Buy a one-off add-on instead of upgrading | Covers one heavy month without repricing the year |
| Haggle with rival quotes in hand | Get the PAC first, so you are choosing rather than asking |
| Leave | The exit cost is itemised before you commit |
The particular thing to watch on budget brands is the introductory rate stepping up after an initial period. Diary that date the day you sign up — and because the plan is rolling, moving away costs nothing.
The facts
- Support style
- Often online-first
- One brand
- Has no phone lines at all, by design
- Written contact
- Leaves a reference
- Login protects
- The number your bank texts
- Genuine offers appear
- Only inside the app
What it means for you
Apps and dashboards here are lighter than the mast owners’. Several brands are online-first and one runs entirely without telephone support as a deliberate choice, which is part of why the price is what it is.
Decide before you buy whether that matters to you. If you would want a human voice when something goes wrong, pay the small premium for a brand that offers one.
- Install it on day one and set the spend cap while you are in there.
- Give the account a password you use nowhere else.
- Switch on every extra protection offered.
- Only ever install from the official app store.
The facts
- First fix
- Wi-Fi Calling
- Second fix
- 4G Calling
- Then
- Ten seconds of airplane mode
- Then
- Status page by postcode
- If it repeats
- Two weeks of written records
What it means for you
| What you see | Usually | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| An older phone dropping calls | 3G has been switched off nationally | Turn on 4G Calling; if the phone cannot, it is finished |
| One room always bad | Building materials blocking radio | Turn on Wi-Fi Calling |
| Full bars, nothing loads | Too many phones on one mast | Nothing on the handset helps |
| Whole street out for hours | Mast work or a local fault | Check the status page by postcode |
If the same problem keeps returning, write it down for a fortnight — dates, times, what failed — then complain in writing with the log attached and ask what goodwill applies to the recorded period. Credits get agreed on evidence.
Every fault and every complaint goes to the brand that bills you — never to the network that owns the masts. That brand raises infrastructure faults with the landlord internally.
The facts
- Keep your number
- Text PAC to 65075
- Give it up
- Text STAC to 75075
- Cost
- Free
- Code valid
- 30 days
- Transfer time
- Usually one working day
- Escalation
- Free at eight weeks
What it means for you
Joining. Check coverage before price. Buy the new plan, text your old network for the code, hand it over, and leave the old SIM in until the number moves — usually the next working day, with no gap.
Leaving. Two text messages. No conversation is required and none can be demanded.
| Text | To | Result |
|---|---|---|
| PAC | 65075 | Your number moves to the new network |
| STAC | 75075 | Account closes, number given up |
| The reply | — | Lists any exit charge and phone balance before you commit |
Your network cannot refuse the code, sit on it, attach conditions, or insist you speak to retentions first. Complain in writing if it goes wrong, keep the reference, and escalate free to the Communications Ombudsman at eight weeks or on a final response.
On rolling plans there is usually nothing at all to settle, which is exactly what makes these brands the sensible way to test any of the four networks before committing to a longer term.
Works well for
- Almost anyone testing a network before committing
- People comfortable with online support
- Very light users, via per-unit billing
- Heavy social and video users, via app exemptions
- People calling abroad regularly on cheap rolling plans
Works badly for
- Anyone who needs a phone line to ring when things break
- People wanting a shop to walk into
- Anyone needing handset finance
- People wanting the newest tiers on launch day
- Households wanting mobile and broadband on one bill
In one line: the same radio waves for less, with the savings coming out of the support desk rather than the network — a very good trade for most households.
Still unsure after reading this?
Ring the desk and we will go through it with you. There is nothing to buy at any stage.