Giffgaff - whats that all about?

[monkey bidness]

I have been getting a lot of emails offering a free sim card with attractive phone/text/data packages. I run an iPad & iPhone on 3, but have found the service to be 'spotty' in the more sparsely inhabited regions of the UK (i.e. virtually all non-urban areas) and I have a Vodaphone dongle for a laptop, but this is even worse than 3 in these same 'blackspots'. I think that giffgaff use the 02 network. Anybody here tried giffgaff or is a longterm user of O2?

 

[cj1]

A network most people have never heard of good coverage and cheap. Gives giffgaff a run for its money
http://ovivomobile.com/

 

[cj1]

only possible downer it uses Vodafone signal but never found it to be an issue

 

[Jonah]

O2 have been terrible for me over this year. Poor signal, poor quality voice calls, calls dropping, calls not connecting, calls going straight to voicemail without the phone even ringing, 3G practically non-existent at times. I've had a new SIM and a new handset without it making much (if any) difference.

I can't wait until my contract expires as I'm leaving as soon as it does.

 

[tek-monkey]

I scrapped O2 earlier this year for that reason. Joined orange, was fine til they started all this EE bullshit and now it socks too

 

[Gramaisc]

EE bullshit

Steady, boy! That's fighting talk in this town..

 

[iamlegend]

been on giffgaff for about 6 months , best network i've been on owned by telefonica (O2) left orange which has the worst signal for me , next year when O2 and vodafone merge and launch their 4g, giffgaff will eventually have a 4g rolling 30 day contract out in the market !!!

 

[Bob]

Only thing I know about Giffgaff is that it sponsors The Big Bang Theory.

 

[Jonah]

I have been told by two friends that GiffGaff's data network is pretty shocking in its reliability. When it's down, which is regularly apparently, then you cannot phone to report the problem, you have to open a thread on their forums.

 

[MagicMonkey]

I went with Giffgaff as it was the cheapest deal I could find, at the time it was 250 mins, unlimited data and texts for £10 per month.
It is now 250 mins, 1GB data and unlimited texts so a lot of other operators are getting closer to the deal but I am happy to stick with them.
They have had a couple of outages this year which was a result of the O2 network being down and it was a pain but I couldn't find a better deal so am sticking with them for now.