O2 review: High prices, not so high performance

Now part of a joint venture with Virgin Media, O2 is the UK’s second-largest mobile network; only EE has more subscribers. What’s more, it provides the network infrastructure used by Tesco Mobile – itself a joint venture between the supermarket and Virgin Media O2 – not to mention Giffgaff and Sky Mobile.

For all its size, though, O2 hasn’t made much of an impact in previous Expert Reviews Mobile Network Awards, and it’s a similar story this year. In 2023, just 63% of O2 users told our survey they were likely to recommend it to a friend. In 2024 that’s risen to 64%, but it’s still the lowest result of any major network featured, and O2 also has the most users who would be unlikely to recommend their current network, at 27%.

O2 review: What do you get?

O2 takes a flexible approach to its pay-monthly phone contracts. You can either go with its ready-made offers or roll your own, selecting the upfront price you’re willing to pay, the contract length and the data allowance, to find the right package for you. On the plus side, this means you can get high-end smartphones for a relatively affordable monthly cost. For example, you could have an iPhone 15 for £19/mth plus £30 up front, provided you could work with a tiny 1GB data allowance.

However, this is over a 36-month term, with the plans for the iPhone and your airtime contract unlinked after the first two years. Take the term down to the more standard 24 months and increase the data allowance to a more realistic 25GB and you’re looking at £28 for the first six months, then 18 months at £56/mth, with an upfront cost of £30. The total cost of the device isn’t an issue – £698 is over £100 less than Apple charges for the phone – but you’re paying a premium for your airtime. If you’re after a new phone, it pays to check that there aren’t better deals elsewhere.

High pricing continues to be an issue with O2’s SIM-only deals. These now come in Classic, Plus and Ultimate flavours, with the main difference being the lineup of features and extras each one includes. The Classic plans come with free EU roaming and three months of Disney+ Standard, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music Unlimited, Audible or McAfee Security. The Plus plans expand the free roaming to cover 75 destinations, including Australia, Mexico and the USA, and extend the extra benefit to six months. Finally, the Ultimate plans offer free roaming in 123 destinations, bundled McAfee Security and the extra benefit now covers the lifetime of the plan.

These plans sound like a great deal, but they start at £15/mth for the Classic 3GB package on a 24-month contract, and extend through the £21/mth 30GB Plus package to the £44/mth Unlimited Ultimate plan. Discount offers will sometimes halve the monthly cost for the first three or six months, but these remain expensive deals. Even the cheapest Unlimited package costs £31/mth.

All this might explain why O2 gets one of the lowest scores for value for money in our survey. Only 21% of the O2 customers we spoke to said they were very satisfied with the network’s value for money, while 56% were fairly satisfied; 19% described themselves as dissatisfied. Only EE had fewer satisfied and more dissatisfied customers for value.

O2 review: Customer service

O2 didn’t do so badly in the customer service section of our survey: 71% of O2 customers said they were satisfied with the network’s customer support, although 11% were dissatisfied. That puts O2 slightly below the industry average, but not to the same extent as iD Mobile, Smarty or Lebara.

Overall levels of customer satisfaction were similarly just below average in Ofcom’s latest round of research. However, in Ofcom’s most recent figures for customer complaints, O2 had the most of any major network, with nine complaints per 100,000 customers against an industry average of four. Customer service is clearly something that O2 needs to address.

O2 review: Coverage, reliability and speed

The latest 2024 research from RootMetrics once again places Virgin Media O2 fourth of the four major UK networks for speed, with a UK-wide median download speed of 23.3Mbits/sec. To put that in perspective, the performance leader, EE, has a UK-wide median download speed of 79.8Mbits/sec, while even third-placed Vodafone can boast 42.8Mbits/sec. It’s a better result than the 15.5Mbits/sec O2 scored in 2023, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

On the plus side, O2 is getting better. 5G coverage now extends across 55.9% of the UK, according to RootMetrics’ tests, while its 5G median download speeds have reached 79.7Mbits/sec. That’s still a lot slower than the 200Mbits/sec plus speeds of Three and EE, but it’s a step in the right direction.

All the same, the O2 customers we surveyed aren’t entirely satisfied with the performance of the network. While 86% said it was always or often fast enough for web browsing, only 64% said the same about audio streaming, and just 58% said the same about video streaming. That places O2 well behind Vodafone and Three, and slightly behind EE. It’s also telling that the O2-powered virtual networks had disappointing results in this section of our survey.

O2 review: Roaming

For all our quibbles on performance, there are still some areas where O2 comes out looking good. It offers free EU roaming on all its pay-monthly and SIM-only phone plans, subject to a reasonably generous 25GB data cap. Go for the Plus or Ultimate plans and the list of roaming destinations grows longer. Even in areas outside your plan’s coverage you can get a Travel Bolt-On, giving you your data allowance, with a 2Mbits/sec speed cap, plus unlimited calls within your destination and back to the UK. This costs £6 per day.

Without this O2 can be expensive, with calls typically costing £2 per minute and texts 50p. Data is sold through roaming bundles, at £9 for 100MB, £18 for 500MB and £26 for 1GB.

O2 review: Other features, services and spending caps

Another good reason to sign up to O2 is the special treatment you’ll receive when visiting the brand’s many UK venues, including priority booking for events and VIP treatment while you’re at the show. Virgin Media broadband customers can also sign up to its Volt packages, which give you double data on each SIM used in your household, plus a boost to your broadband speeds.

O2 supports spending caps of between £0 and £200 over your normal monthly contract spend. Once the cap is set, you need to contact O2 via phone or online chat to modify it.

O2 review: Verdict

As we’ve said, O2 is an expensive network and, at this point, neither the performance nor the customer service really justifies the cost. The extras are very tempting, but not tempting enough to make up for the shortfall. EE also struggles on customer service, but its 5G network is larger and considerably faster. Vodafone and Three have it beaten on overall value, while the no-frills networks are significantly cheaper for any given data allowance. Until the network improves its service and speeds, it’s going to be difficult to recommend.