Virtual Mobile Operators
A very short post this week… more of a reference table than a post really! In the UK, there are only 3 physical phone operators. All the others are Virtual Operators, i.e. they use the infrastructure from another operator. They may route the calls differently, or direct you to another directory enquiries – but the masts they use is from the physical operator. This is particularly important if you are having coverage trouble; it would be pointless to leave Orange for Blyk mobile because you don’t get a signal in your house as Blyk shares the masts with Orange.
| Virtual Operator | Physical Operator |
| 3 | Orange in non-3G areas |
| abica | 3, Orange and T-Mobile |
| ASDA Mobile | Vodafone |
| Blyk | Orange |
| BT Mobile | Vodafone |
| Fresh Mobile | T-Mobile |
| Giff Gaff | O2 |
| Ikea | O2 |
| Lebara Mobile | Vodafone |
| Lycamobile | Orange (though recently signed a deal with O2) |
| Mobileworld | T-Mobile |
| Sainsbury Mobile | O2 |
| Talkmobile | T-Mobile |
| Tesco Mobile | O2 |
| Virgin Mobile | T-Mobile |
Coming next week… time permitting… either a rant on single-use codes for videogames or a theme I’ve wanted to do for a while, which illustrates exploits for things that people don’t assign value to (e.g. medical data, birthdate, address, etc). Hopefully, even if one person changes their behaviour and protects themselves more because of reading this, I will be happy!