The ASDA mobile phone service used to be run on top of Vodafone's own network, but after 7 years the contract between Vodafone and ASDA was finally ended on 30th April 2014. Good thing for ASDA users, to replace Vodafone's network they launched a new network running on EE's 2G & 3G coverage causing the tariff to be lower.
ASDA Mobile is offering two types of tariff; monthly bundles and pay as you go (a-la-carte pricing).
Monthly bundles are a set of allowances which include mobile data, texts, and calls. If you are a frequent user this type of pricing could be quite beneficial for you. The cheapest bundle will cost you £5 a month, you will get 100 minutes, 2,000 texts, and 100MB of data. The most expensive bundle only costs £25 which will get you 1,000 minutes, 2,000 texts, and 1.5GB of data.
If you're not planning on using your mobile phone very frequently, PAYG pricing might be more suitable for you. They charge 8p per minute, 4p per text and 5p per megabyte of data but as always, if you have no credit you can send a free text to an ASDA mobile online. The pricing for mobile data can be a little expensive with this kind of arrangement, as normally, a typical smartphone user usually consumes about 10MB of data per day, so it might cost you about £15 per month eventually. However the good thing is, even though you're using the prepaid pricing for making phone calls and texting, you can still buy the mobile data in a bundle. It will only cost you £5 to get 500MB that will be active for 30 days. For a typical smartphone user that amount of data will be more than enough.
Needless to say that any network will have their coverage black spots, so it would be wise to check the EE's coverage before you sign up to use ASDA Mobile on EE (even though the advertisement said that it's giving nationwide coverage of about 99%). You can do that by going to this page: EE Coverage Checker.
Usually when you're switching your mobile network, your phone number will change and you will have to tell everyone on your contact list about your new phone number. However, if you join ASDA, it's possible for you to keep your old phone number. The first thing you need to do is to contact your old mobile network to request a PAC code, it's a nine digit number that will provide ASDA with authorisation to port your number to their network. After you have your ASDA SIM card, use your handset to dial 2732 then give the PAC code to ASDA Customer Care. It will take no more than 24 hours to get your old phone number to your ASDA Mobile.
One critical comment that we often hear regarding the ASDA Mobile service is that it hasn't introduced 4G connectivity yet. However, if you think about it, for most smartphone activities 4G connectivity is actually not really needed because 3G download speeds are already fast enough to support them web browsing, downloading of emails and any in-app data transfers. In addition to this, many people have Wi-Fi at home so they can always use that connection if need be.
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