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Vodafone
Vodafone is adding free Netflix to its top 4G deals, giving you six months of movie and TV streaming alongside your choice of Spotify or Sky Sports.
From this Friday 12 September 2014 until 3 November you get two bonus options on top of your super-fast mobile data for your smartphone. The offer is open to anyone signing up for Vodafone’s Red XL or Red XXL 4G deals, which include unlimited calls, unlimited texts and 10GB or 13GB of data each month. When you first sign up you also get a “data test drive”, three months of unlimited data.
4G free-for-all
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Up to now each Vodafone deal came with a choice of access to either movie and TV streaming from Netflix, ad-free music streaming from Spotify, or the latest sporting action from Sky Sports. The lower-priced deals will continue to have the same choice of one of the three, while those on the two higher-tier deals get Netflix plus one of the others.
The Netflix offer lasts six months, but the Spotify and Sky Sports subscription lasts the full 24 months of your contract.
“The timing of this announcement is no coincidence,” says Ernest Doku of uSwitch.com, referring to the new iPhone 6, “tying in with the launch of this year’s most hotly anticipated, data-hungry handset.”
Vodafone has opted for subscriptions to streaming services as an incentive to attract people to its 4G network because, like O2 and Three, it came late to the party. EE was the first 4G network in the UK and as such has the best coverage, although a year after joining in, the other networks are catching up. O2’s incentives for 4G include an Evernote subscription and Premier League goals from The Sun, while Three’s incentive is that it doesn’t charge extra for 4G.
“Vodafone’s 4G coverage is still a way behind EE’s 70 per cent,” points out Doku. “That means that even with the added perks, Vodafone’s 4G deals won’t be of use to everyone yet.”