Vodafone has made its broadband and home phone service available to its mobile customers across the U.K. and plans to open it up to non-mobile customers later in the year.
The U.K. mobile operator on Wednesday said it has received positive feedback from a limited rollout that began in June and as such is now extending the service to its entire U.K. customer base.
And a spokesperson for the company told Total Telecom that the service will be available to customers of other mobile operators "in the autumn."
"We started our broadband journey with an exclusive offer available only to a few Vodafone customers," said Cindy Rose, consumer director at Vodafone UK. "We have now extended this to all of our millions of customers as our way of saying thank you for their loyalty," she added.
The service is priced according to speed, and existing Vodafone mobile customers get a discount of £5 per month.
The basic plan comes with an ADSL connection offering up to 17 Mbps and costs £10 per month for non-mobile customers (later in the year) or £5 for mobile customers. In addition to the £5 discount, mobile customers get their Internet package for half price for the first 12 months, meaning the basic plan initially costs £2.50 a month.
The most expensive plan has a sticker price of £25 per month for a fibre-based service of up to 76 Mbps. Existing Vodafone mobile customers will pay £10 per month for the first year, rising to £20 per month thereafter.
Customers on all plans get free evening and weekend calls to landlines; at other times calls carry a 15 pence connection charge and calls to landlines are billed at 9.5 pence per minute and to mobiles at 11.5 pence per minute. Vodafone Red mobile customers get free calls to landlines at all times and 300 free minutes to mobile numbers.
All customers are subject to a £16.99 monthly line rental charge and contract lengths are all 18 months.
Vodafone is also pitching various additional features, including discounted femtocells for customers with indoor coverage issues, and its Vodafone Connect mobile app that enables users to prioritise the connection to certain devices on their home network, set limits on the availability of WiFi and provide guest access to the network to visitors.
Two months ago Vodafone announced the launch of its broadband and home phone service to mobile customers in Manchester, Berkshire and parts of Hampshire and Surrey, and said it would extend it to Essex, Hertfordshire and Yorkshire in the subsequent weeks. The telco also offers fixed broadband services in 12 European countries and has signed up 11 million customers to date.
"We have had great feedback on our broadband service from the customers involved in our regional launch," said Vodafone UK CEO Jeroen Hoencamp. "We are looking forward to many other customers taking us up on our great offer and joining us on our journey to be the U.K.’s leading provider of entertainment services."
