Carphone Warehouse trials unlimited mobile broadband

Carphone Warehouse has joined 3 in offering truly unlimited data for mobile customers, albeit on a trial basis.

People signing up to the company's Talkmobile mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which resells Vodafone connectivity, will be able to get unlimited internet access on their smartphones as part of contracts starting at £12 a month. However, they will have to sign up to a 24-month contract between 6 April and 4 May, if they are to get the 'Never Pay for the Internet' add-on, Carphone Warehouse said on Wednesday.

3 contract customers can only get unlimited internet on that network's One Plan, which starts at £25 a month, but 3 also provides unlimited internet on pay-as-you-go packages starting at £15 per month.

Explaining the Talkmobile 'Never Pay for the Internet' deal, Carphone Warehouse UK trading director Mark Eastham said the tariff could be used with 30 smartphones sold by the company.

"We wanted to offer customers a catch-free data tariff and we're really looking forward to seeing the results of this trial," Eastham said in a statement. "There's no small print or fair usage policy so when we say unlimited internet access we really mean it."

Carphone Warehouse and 3's foray into truly unlimited data comes soon after all major network operators abandoned what they had previously termed 'unlimited data'. Those deals, though, had come with 'fair use policies' in the small print that limited the amount of data customers were able to use.

Under scrutiny by advertising standards watchdogs, operators are now more explicit about their caps. They have also generally reduced those limits from one or two gigabytes to a mere 500MB, which makes offers of truly unlimited internet more enticing.