Carphone Warehouse launches iD network with amazing 4G deals from £7.50/month

Carphone Warehouse has launched its brand new iD mobile network in the UK. The service, which runs off Three masts to provide free 4G at no extra cost, starts at just £7.50-a-month, and Carphone Warehouse hopes it will offer some of the best value 4G plans on the market. It also aims to provide greater flexibility in the form of 12 month contracts and greater access to free data roaming with plans that cover more European countries than anyone else. 

iD’s free roaming plans are particularly promising, as Carphone Warehouse has said it will cover 22 countries in total (beating Three’s current total of 18 countries where you can use its Feel at Home service), with all but two of them (the US and Australia) located in Europe. These include Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden. 

This puts iD miles ahead of current leader Three, who currently only have 10 European countries which support its Feel at Home service (namely Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). Three has more non-European countries (adding Indonesia, Israel, Macau, New Zealand and Sri Lanka to the mix), but iD will no doubt prove more useful to the majority of UK phone owners in the long run. These 24-month ‘Takeaway’ Plans will start from £25.50 per month for 600 minutes, 5,000 texts and 500MB of data.

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There will also be ‘Shockproof’ Plans available, which are automatically capped to avoid any nasty surprises at the end of the month. They also have a £5 buffer which customers can view and change through their account. However, the Shockproof deals only go up to 1GB of data, so anyone wanting more will likely need one of the more flexible ‘Go To’ Plans.

The ‘Go To’ plans include 12 month contracts from £13.50 per month (or £11.50 for 24 months) and will supposedly cater for what Carphone Warehouse calls the ‘always on’ customer with its generous data allowances. As for SIM-only deals, these will start from 30 day rolling plans from £7.50 a month and data-only plans from £5 a month. At launch, there will also be a £20-a-month SIM-only deal that offers unlimited data, 2,000 minutes and 5,000 texts.

Starting today for a limited time only, iD is also running “mega offers” on particular handsets. For instance, you could get a Samsung Galaxy A3 on a 12-month 4G plan with 300 minutes, 5,000 texts and 1GB of data for £19.50 a month. 

However, all iD contract deals are only available on certain phones, which may be a bit limiting if you have your heart set on a particular handset. For instance, the cheapest pay monthly deal (which gives you 150 minutes, 5,000 texts and 250MB of data for £7.50-a-month) is only available on the Nokia Lumia 635. 

A better bet, then, is likely to be one of iD’s SIM-only deals if you’re thinking of switching network. These also start from £7.50-a-month, and this gets you either 250 minutes, 5,000 texts and 500MB of data or 100 minutes, 5,000 texts and 1GB of data. This compares very favourably to other cheap SIM-only providers such as GiffGaff, as GiffGaff’s cheapest 4G SIM deal costs £12-a-month, which gives you 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data. You also get more data for your dime on iD than you do on Three as well, as Three’s £10-a-month SIM-only deal gets you just 500MB of data along with 100 minutes and 3,000 texts. 

iD will be available to customers from all Carphone Warehouse stores and online, and, of course, through all Currys and PC World stores now that it’s part of the Dixon Carphone family.