UK Telecoms Providers Remove All Data Caps on Home Broadband Services

Britain's big telecoms providers have agreed to lift the data caps on all fixed-line broadband services to help people isolated at home following the coronavirus epidemic, reports Reuters.

ipadmini
The companies, which include BT, Virgin Media, Sky, O2, Vodafone, Three, and TalkTalk, committed to support and protect vulnerable customers during the pandemic following talks with the government and telecoms regulator Ofcom.

The ISPs are also introducing additional measures, which include helping customers who find it difficult to pay bills because of the viral outbreak, improving mobile and landline packages, and prioritizing repairs for vulnerabile customers.

"It is essential that people stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives. This package helps people to stay connected whilst they stay home," Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said in the government statement.

The U.K. government last week imposed strict measures on public movement, including social distancing, a ban on gatherings of more than two people, and the closure of all shops selling non-essential goods.

People have also been told they should only leave the house to shop for basic necessities, exercise, medical needs and traveling to work if they can't work from home. The measures are expect to remain in place for at least 13 weeks, and possibly longer.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...
Mac Studio Feature

Apple Begins Selling Refurbished Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips at a Discount

Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by
Apple today added Mac Studio models with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips to its online certified refurbished store in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and many European countries, for the first time since they were released in March. As usual for refurbished Macs, prices are discounted by approximately 15% compared to the equivalent new models on Apple's online store. Note that Apple's ...
m4 macbook air pink

Apple Now Selling Refurbished M4 MacBook Air Models

Friday June 13, 2025 3:34 pm PDT by
Apple today added M4 MacBook Air models to its refurbished store in the United States, making the latest MacBook Air devices available at a discounted price for the first time since they launched earlier this year. Both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are available, with Apple offering multiple capacities and configurations. The refurbished devices are discounted by approximately 15...

Top Rated Comments

Andy-V Avatar
68 months ago
I didn't think many broadband packages in the UK actually had caps.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kimjongjohan Avatar
68 months ago
Do you seriously have data caps on home broadband?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nicho Avatar
68 months ago

Good grief some people are full of crap online. The facts:

For wired broadband, Ofcom enforces a standard called 'true unlimited' - most broadband packages now seem to be labelled as such, and that's exactly what it says on the tin. Some (cheaper) plans are 'unlimited' which means no data cap, but they have fair usage strings attached so if you go over a certain amount per month, you get your speed throttled, but technically there's no limit to the overall amount of data you can use.

I can only imagine the data caps being talked about are for home broadband using the mobile phone network, as they're the only ones I could see that actually had usage caps when we switched not that far back. In rural areas sometimes you can get faster speeds this way using 4G, but obviously the network is more prone to congestion.
Your opening statement made me spit coffee by the time I reached your final paragraph in which it is painfully obvious you didn't even read so far as the 14th word of the article.

Here's a yahoo article where you only have to read as far as the 13th word to see that your "facts" are wrong. I guess you did present them as being imagined, so there's that:

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-uk-broadband-data-caps-093923963.html

You're ignoring the existence of older plans, which you wouldn't see if switching recently. Some people don't like change.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gusping Avatar
68 months ago

I didn't think many broadband packages in the UK actually had caps.
Not many people have capped packaged at all, as far as I am aware. I expect 90+% of people have an unlimited data contract with their ISP. As much as I moan about the poor infrastructure here in the UK, we don't get mugged by our ISPs as much as our American friends do.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
KrisLord Avatar
68 months ago
This is welcome, but very few packages have any sort of data cap.
Perhaps there are people on legacy deals that never upgraded to uncapped products.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ruka.snow Avatar
68 months ago
It's crazy to think there are any services out there with caps, even late dialup and my first broadband(256Kbps) was unlimited.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)