vodafone
Latest
O2 is bringing free 1 Gbps WiFi to the City of London
Workers and residents in London's "Square Mile" will enjoy free 1 Gbps WiFi connections, thanks to a new deal between the City of London Corporation and mobile carrier O2. The multi-million pound deal will see Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Ltd (CTIL) -- a joint venture between Vodafone and O2 owner Telefónica -- place "small cell" 4G mobile hotspots on lampposts, street signs, buildings and CCTV arrays in order to provide blanket superfast internet coverage across the city.
UK broadband prices to fall as Ofcom prioritises high speeds
Ofcom says millions of UK broadband customers could soon pay less for superfast broadband under new plans to limit the amount Openreach charges other ISPs to access its fibre network. The communications regulator said today that it wants to slash the cost of new connections for lower tier fibre services (up to 40Mbps) from £88.80 pounds a year to £52.77 in the hope that providers, like BT and TalkTalk, will pass those savings on to customers.
Vodafone abandons its pay-TV plans
In a fairly predictable move, Vodafone has said it's all but deserted plans to launch a pay-TV service in the UK. The company has barely touched on its televisual ambitions since announcing in spring 2015 that it expected to have something ready before the end of that year. As The Telegraph reports, the project was beset by development delays and difficulty hashing out a deal to carry BT's sports channels. Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said that although the pay-TV service was now at a stage where it could be launched "within weeks," the company has decided to put its plans on indefinite hiatus.
Vodafone fined £4.6m after PAYG top-up fails
Vodafone has been slapped with a hefty £4.6 million fine after failing to process customer top-ups. UK regulator Ofcom found that 10,452 pay-as-you-go (PAYG) customers weren't given a combined £150,000 in credit between December 2013 and April 2015. The affected users were relying on "E Top-Up" methods, including cash machines, direct debit, and E Top-Up swipe cards. According to Ofcom, the embarrassing snafu occurred after Vodafone changed its internal billing systems in 2010. The company "failed to act quickly enough" to address the problems and only stopped "customers from paying money for nothing" after Ofcom intervened.
Vodafone now blocks unwanted calls before they reach you
Nuisance callers are having a tough time of it already this year, with Ofcom banning them from withholding numbers and helping to create a simple, text registration option for the UK's leave-me-alone database. But Vodafone's decided to go even further, today announcing that it has begun blocking unwanted calls at the network level, so they don't even reach your phone in the first place.
Vodafone scraps line rental charges for fibre broadband
Let's face it: signing up for an internet connection is a lot harder than it needs to be. Things like installation fees and additional monthly charges can often push the cost higher than originally advertised. That's unless you're Vodafone, which has today announced it's abolishing line rental charges for its fibre broadband altogether in what it calls an "industry first."
Fix Britain's Internet: ISPs campaign to tear BT and Openreach apart
After reviewing the tangled relationship between BT and its broadband infrastructure subsidiary Openreach for more than a year, Ofcom yesterday put forward its plan to create a greater distinction between the two businesses. Under the proposals, Openreach would become "a legally separate company," whilst remaining under the BT Group umbrella; a move Ofcom says is the most cost-effective and least disruptive way of giving Openreach greater independence. But -- surprise, surprise -- BT competitors, which are also Openreach customers, believe Ofcom hasn't gone far enough.
Android will now automatically send your location to 999 operators
When you call 999, operators need to know exactly where an emergency is before they can dispatch the required service. That information can be difficult to share if you're in unfamiliar surroundings but a new update coming to Android will take all of the guesswork out of locating where you are. It's called the Emergency Location Service and it uses available WiFi connections, GPS and mobile masts to pinpoint your location and share it with an operator while you're speaking with them.
Vodafone's Smart Ultra 7 is another unremarkable refresh
Vodafone is back in Moto G territory with the Smart Ultra 7, an own-brand smartphone designed to replace the decent Smart Ultra 6 from last year. The new model is a smidge more expensive -- £135 on pay-as-you-go, rather than £125 -- but offers an ever-so-slightly more luxurious design. The Ultra 6's grey plastic shell has been swapped our for the same faux-leather look found on Vodafone's cheaper Smart Prime 7. It doesn't scream style, but neither will it attract much attention in a conference room.
Vodafone enters flagship territory with the Smart Platinum 7
When mobile providers make own-brand devices, they stick to a pretty strict set of unwritten principles. While many customers will want the best that Apple, Samsung, HTC and other big names have to offer, homegrown handsets are for everyone else. They typically represent an agreeable balance between performance and cost, sometimes hitting the sweet spot, and sometimes not. After a couple of recent, somewhat disappointing releases, Vodafone has thrown the rulebook out the window with the new Smart Platinum 7: A network flagship with many of the bells and whistles you'd expect from a major manufacturer's top-end device.
Vodafone's own-brand handsets are new, not very improved
Vodafone set a new benchmark for own-brand phones with its Smart Ultra 6. The handset is actually a fiver more expensive now than when it launched almost a year ago, and yet it's still one of the best pound-for-pound devices available in the UK. The problem with setting benchmarks, though, is that you also set expectations -- expectations that the next cycle, starting with the Smart Prime 7 released today, are measured against. At £75 on pay-as-you-go, the new handset is as easy on the wallet as the Prime 6 that came before it. The problem, though, is that the Prime 7 barely counts as an upgrade.
Vodafone bundles European roaming into its standard plans
Following Three and Tesco Mobile, Vodafone is now offering inclusive roaming with its Red and Red Value contracts in the UK. When you travel abroad, this means you won't be charged extra for texting, calling or accessing the internet. There are a few caveats, however. While calls and texts are unlimited -- so it's impossible to be charged for them -- data will be capped at a preset amount. The restriction will vary depending on your plan, but by way of example, an 8GB Red Value bundle will give you 2GB of inclusive data, while a 12GB Red Value plan gives you 4GB of data.
Vodafone contracts now include a 30-day escape guarantee
There are plenty of things to consider when eyeing up a new mobile contract, from network quality and coverage to handset selection and pricing. All carriers try to tip the scales in their favour with device pre-order bonuses, a complimentary subscription here, free roaming there, et cetera. And in an attempt to distinguish itself from competitors, Vodafone announced a brand new customer perk today: The 30-day guarantee.
Vodafone's back with another cheap(ish) 4G tablet
Network-branded hardware is normally a bit of a bore, but Vodafone surprised us last year with its excellent value and well-constructed Smart Ultra 6 phone. Today the company is following up with a new tablet, the poorly named Tab Speed 6, which packs a fairly decent spec sheet for £125 on Pay As You Go. Up front is an 8-inch WXGA panel with a 1280 x 800 resolution, which conceals a 1.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor and 1GB of RAM. Inside there's also a 4,060 mAh battery and 16GB of storage, which can be expanded by up to 64GB with a microSD card.
Vodafone brings WiFi calling to the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge
Vodafone launched its seamless WiFi calling service in early autumn, opting for a native experience over the kind of apps O2 and Three use. For several months, only iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners have actually been able to use the feature, but today the carrier announced it's added Samsung's Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge to the list of compatible handsets (as long as you got yours from Vodafone directly). While it's good news for a subset of customers, it also highlights the sluggish rate at which native WiFi calling is being made available across the network. In the three-plus months since switching on the service, Vodafone has managed to enable the feature on a grand total of four handsets.
![[Image credit: Shutterstock]](https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/VpmJ6PlQRRCD8cPWHEBUdA--~B/Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQ2ODtweW9mZj0wO3c9ODMyO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/49116fbd89e55352e0fdc212210c4b5f/203142547/stock-photo-young-girl-in-a-fashionable-sweater-sitting-in-a-cafe-with-a-cup-of-coffee-and-read-messages-on-269314832.jpg.cf.jpg)
UK carriers say draft snooping law will be a technical feat
Key to the draft Investigatory Powers Bill is a proposal that would require internet and other communications providers to collect and store 12 months of web traffic data, so it can be made available to government agencies when needed. It's a subject of ongoing debate in Parliament, and just last week, the UK's major ISPs voiced their concerns over the cost and technical challenges associated with gathering and processing these Internet Connection Records (ICRs). Yesterday, it was the turn of execs from EE, Three, O2 and Vodafone to meet with the draft bill's joint committee, and while the big four carriers echoed the sentiments of the ISPs, they are even more wary of the scale and scope of what the government is asking them to deliver.
Vodafone says 1,827 customers' bank details accessed in attack
In what's been a big week for corporate security following the TalkTalk hack, Vodafone has confirmed that it has also been the target of a malicious attack. In a statement today, the company said that between midnight on October 28th and midday on the 29th, it saw an unauthorised party attempt to access customer's details, including bank account numbers. Unlike its telecoms rival, which saw its website compromised via SQL injection, the carrier believes the source of the attack stems from criminals utilising "email addresses and passwords acquired from an unknown source external to Vodafone."
Sainsbury's will kill its mobile network on January 15th
After more than two years of selling mobile plans to customers, Sainsbury's is very suddenly exiting the game. Talks with Vodafone, the carrier underpinning the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), apparently broke down, leading the supermarket chain to quietly pull monthly plans from its website. A knowledgeable source told Engadget that Sainsbury's began removing marketing material in stores yesterday and is in the process of contacting existing customers about their next steps.
Vodafone's home broadband service opens to all
After a three-year hiatus, Vodafone returned to the home broadband game this summer, starting out with a limited service available in just a few counties. A few months later, it expanded the launch to everywhere its underground infrastructure (licenced and owned) covered, but only offered the "Connect" broadband service to existing Vodafone mobile customers. Today, the company announced it's now available to everyone, not just those it has on its books already. Assuming Vodafone Connect is available in your area, you can get up to 17 Mbps ADSL for a tenner a month, up to 38 Mbps fibre for twice that, or up to 76 Mbps fibre for £25 per month.
Vodafone's Call+ lets you share photos and maps while you chat
Regular phone calls are simple affairs: just one voice on either end of the line. If you want to share anything other than a quick natter, like a meet-up address, some other communication tool is required. Not with Call+, though, Vodafone's new service that brings multimedia sharing to the humble phone call. Launching less than a month after Vodafone switched on seamless WiFi calling, the Call+ service lets users send images, maps and contacts in real-time, as well as start a video call on the fly. All of this is also accessible from the call log after you hang up, much like an instant messaging thread.
