The lowdown on giffgaff
giffgaff (uncomfortably all lowercase) is a brand new pay-as-you-go MVNO backed by O2 (and using the O2 network) that claims to be “The People Powered Network”, they launched their service yesterday morning and I was lucky enough to get up close and personal with the giffgaff management team to get the lowdown on this unique mobile offering.
The giffgaff SIM comes in an obscure origami wrapper.
First up let’s look at their pricing, completely free voice calls, SMS, MMS, call forwarding and video calls between giffgaff users (as long as you top up at least £10 every 3 months), which should go down well with the target pay as you go market as well as encouraging groups of friends and family to sign up en masse. There is a fair usage limit on the free voice calls of 60 minutes per call followed by the standard 8p/min charge but it’s nice to see that the terms and conditions recommend users “Re-dail after 60 minutes to re-commence the free minutes” even if they did manage to typo Re-dial (is this a giff-gaffe? BADOOM-TISH!).
Calls to other mobile networks and UK landlines come in at 8p/min (it’s the same cost to forward calls to other networks and landlines as well)
SMS to non giffgaff UK numbers is 4p per message
MMS to non giffgaff handsets will be billed at 16p per message although the launch website is mistaken in offering 16p per MB.
Video calls to non giffgaff UK numbers are charged at an unexciting 50p/min but who actually uses video calls anyway?
We’ll see absolutely free calls to freephone numbers which is how most consumers think it should be, but unfortunately isn’t with most UK networks but don’t sing giffgaff’s praises too loudly just yet because…
Calling voicemail costs a flat fee of 8p per call (BOO HISSS!) however giffgaff have confirmed that you can disable voicemail by pressing #004# then the dial/send button (re-enable voicemail with *004#) so those of you who perpetually have no credit won’t end up with voicemails you can’t listen to (although people won’t be able to leave you messages either). What would be nice here is perhaps some integration with a transcription company such as my current favorite Vox Sciences or, dare I say it, SpinVox. Even e-mail attachments of the audio would be nice (and fairly easy to implement).
Last but by no means least…. DATA!
Data is absolutely free for the first 6 months of the service. Ostensibly this is due to giffgaff not really knowing how to price data but they have been quite open about this since announcing the service and will be taking on board feedback from early users as well was taking cues from usage statistics that show how giffgaff users consume data.
While the iPhone betrays giffgaff's O2 roots by displaying "O2-UK" as the network, other handsets such as the INQ Mini show the giffgaff brand. The "Planet 3" link remains from this handset's 3UK origins, highlighting branding issues behind using unlocked handsets from other networks. We think the data-centric INQ handsets make a perfect match for giffgaff users.
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