Mobile Network Comparison

We get a lot of emails and enquiries from Giffgaff users about using voicemail and the various features on offer. Rather than adding another huge section to our comprehensive review, this short post aims to outline everything you can and can’t do with Giffgaff voicemail.

First things first, simply accessing your voicemail is really easy. You just need to dial 443 from your phone. You can remember this easily as it spells “Gif” on your keypad. Alternatively, you can dial your own bumber. All calls cost a flat rate of 8p each no matter how long it takes. If you are on a goodybag with included minutes remaining, all voicemail calls will use up one minute of your allowance. This is the case anywhere on a UK network. If you are roaming abroad, you can still access your voicemail by dialling 443 but you will be charged a per minute roaming rate instead of the flat fee.

If you are on an iPhone, Apple have made it so that the voicemail button doesn’t work. Instead you’ll have to dial 443 manually. Visual voicemail also won’t work but there are superior apps you can use as an alternative. You can also set up text alerts for your voicemails by dialling 443 then pressing * then 4 then 1 then 1.

Turning voicemail on and off can be done on your handset. To turn it on, all you need to do is dial *004# and hit the call button. You should get some sort of on-screen notification that the command has worked. To turn it off again, just type #004# and press the call button. As before, you’ll get a notification. If you don’t know how your voicemail is currently set, you can check the status instantly by dialling *#004#. Then you’ll get a message telling you whether you have it off or on. If your voicemail is currently diverted to another number, you should first divert to Giffgaff voicemail by dialling **004#443# then press the call button. If at any time you get a command error trying to use these codes, trying switching your voicemail off and then on again.

When you first join Giffgaff, your voicemail will be turned on but you will need to set it up. When you first call the voicemail number, you will be able to leave a personalised message. You can also set up a PIN code which will allow you to access your voicemail from another phone. To change your pin at any time, call your voicemail number on 443 then press * then 4 then 4 then 1. After inputting your old PIN, you’ll then be able to enter a new replacement PIN. If you ever forget your PIN code, you can reset it by logging into your account and asking an agent. To use your PIN to access your voicemail from another phone line, just dial 443 as usual then press * to enter your PIN and hear your voicemails.

All voicemails remain on your phone for 30 days. If you have any other questions about Giffgaff voicemail, please ask below.

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Challenging even the best-value networks and hot on the heels of a new ad-supported data network, it now looks like the cheapest mobile offer is £0/month!

A brand new virtual mobile network called Ovivo has just launched and they pledge to give you calls, texts and mobile internet absolutely free. No more wasting £30/month on an iPhone contract – now you can get a mobile for nothing at all. They claim that smartphone users will get 200 minutes, 200 texts and half a gigabyte of data every month and won’t have to pay for it at all. Even tablet users are catered for with 1GB of free mobile internet on offer at no cost whatsoever.

So what’s the catch? We’re not sure yet. You have to order your SIM for £5 initially but you get this balance back as credit straight away. Even if you go over the included amounts, the prices seem great value at just 6p/minute for calls and 6p per text message. We’re still not convinced this business model is viable even in this day and age but we’ll be looking to get in touch with Ovivo to find out a bit more. Please check back soon as we want to run an in-depth interview with the people behind this very soon.

So what do you think? Are you tempted by the rock-bottom prices? Do you think the advertising will be too intrusive? And do you think you’ll sign up or do you not see it working in the long term?

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Welcome back to the second part of our exclusive interview with Samba Mobile founder and CEO Ben Atherton. Last time we went over several details about the rather unique business model and now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty – how to get started, what exactly you have to do to get free mobile broadband and his vision of the future the telecommunications sector.

One of our readers, Joe, has already found out some details about the adverts and how they translate into credit/mobile data. He says that after watching six adverts, the average length was about one and a half minutes. The shortest was 38 seconds and the longest just over two minutes. On average you will earn 3.5 MB of data usage per advert watched which works out at about 2.3 MB of data for watching each minute of advertisement. So it sounds rather reasonable if you just want to use it for light browsing.

And now, with no further ado, the rest of the interview:

When do you launch and how can users get started with Samba?

We have already launched for iPad. Just go to to our site and order your micro sim card (£4.99 + £2.50 p&P). NB we make no money on the SIM as we don’t subsidise like the big networks.

Takes 5 minutes and then we despatch next day. No more cost, everything from then on is free.

You can earn credit immediately on the website.

If you are a laptop/tablet user – you can pre-register for a dongle at www.sambamobile.com

What sort of ratio of advert-viewing-to-free-service can we expect?

From the trial users watched an average of 103 ads per month, or 3 a day (90 seconds a day). We have some longer content now so that could be 2 mins per day.

Lots of people have asked whether there are any upfront costs at all – is this the case?

Yes of course, see above. We have to cover our sim and dongle costs, and p&p. We aren’t like the networks, who subsidise this because they know they can expect a further £300-400+ from you over the lifetime of your contract.

What do you think the impact of 4G and the exponential rise of smartphones is going to be on data pricing and where do you see the network in five years?

It’s a very good question. Cisco thinks that “Mobile-connected tablets will generate almost as much traffic in 2016 as the entire global mobile network in 2012”.

They also see video driving huge amounts of this traffic. So we see Samba as a service whose ‘time has come’ .

Re pricing, the operators, in our view, will exponentially build capacity, and users (on all devices) will grow both traffic as well as more users coming onto the network. So overall data traffic will explode.

But overall ARPU, will not grow directly in relation to traffic – the history of mobile voice, text and fixed broadband show that – and people’s disposable income wont grow in direct relation to traffic either – so by definition the cost of data per unit (MB, G, EXA) will have to drop.

But it wont be radical and it wont be overnight – so data will be a valuable commodity for some time to come.

We hoped you enjoyed that and found it useful. Do you have any other questions you’d like to ask about Samba? Let us know and we’ll do our best to answer them or even put them to the CEO in another interview.

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