Virgin Media O2’s Essential Broadband package is for people facing financial difficulty and receiving certain benefit payments. The plan offers speeds of 15Mbps and costs £12.50 per month – making it one of the cheapest social tariffs on the market. The plan has no fixed-term contract length and no price changes while benefit payments are being received.  

In addition, Essential Broadband Plus provides 54Mbps broadband for just £20 a month for customers receiving certain benefits. It is available on a 30-day rolling contract with no price change for as long as a customer is receiving benefit payments. Customers can add our ‘TV Stream’ entertainment service for a one-off fee of £20 (a 42% saving on the normal price) and benefit from 10% back on their streaming subscriptions, giving them a more affordable way to subscribe to major streaming services.

Both tariffs are available for people receiving the following benefits: Employment Support Allowance (I-ESA), Income-based Jobseekers Allowance (I-JSA) and Income Support (IS) and Pension Credit (PC).  

Furthermore, Virgin Media O2 became one of the first major telecoms providers to fully integrate the Department for Work and Pensions’ social tariff checking tool, making it faster and easier for customers to prove their eligibility with a one-off automated check.

The National Databank:

Virgin Media O2, together with charity, Good Things Foundation, launched the National Databank to tackle data poverty by providing free mobile data to people in need.

The National Databank is like a food bank but provides free O2 data, texts and calls. Virgin Media O2 has committed more than 61 million GB of free data to the initiative by the end of 2025.  Anyone in need can get 25GB of free O2 mobile data per month through the National Databank’s network of more than 1,500 National Databank Hubs nationwide.  People can find their nearest National Databank Hub here.