It has recently been announced that as of June 24th, O2 will no longer be offering unlimited internet to it’s new and upgrading customers. The move has shocked many, but O2 has said that too many people use the network abusively and as a result they have been forced to take action.
O2 has mentioned in it’s press release that the changes will only affect about 3% of it’s customers who use the network excessively. The remaining 97% will not be affected as O2 claims that even the lowest internet package, providing 500MB per month, is more than 2.5 times the average monthly user usage.
Customers currently on contracts with O2 will continue to receive unlimited data until 1st October, but will have to watch for changes to their contract over the next few months to make sure they don’t receive horrendous charges.
The question is whether other networks will follow suit. Orange currently offers “unlimited” internet packages, but hidden in the FUP are limits restricting customers. As usual, Orange has forgotten the meaning of unlimited. Vodafone is slightly clearer, offering fixed plans with fixed usage limits.
It is also worth thinking about whether O2’s increasingly popular MVNO, giffgaff, will follow suit. The network announced today that they have no plans to change their unlimited internet offers with their goodybags, but stated that they couldn’t guarantee this wouldn’t change in the future.
Personally, I don’t think the news is all that bad – as customers will finally get a clear idea of what they can use each month in terms of data, but time will tell as to whether customers agree to the changes.