Longest PAYG Credit Expiry?

Jakg

Looking to get a SIM card for a tracking project - it's a small device which sends a text when requested.

To my knowledge, most networks have an annoying "you must top up every 180 days" requirement.

The credit would take an age to get used up (£10 would probably last me years!), so i'm wondering which network has the longest expiration of credit.

Ideally, i'd also like a network that takes £5 topups...

Jon_01

I think Virgin is the longest at something like a year. But I don't know if they offer £5 topup. Orange do offer £5 topups, but if there's no traffic through the sim it's closed after 6 months.

bluu2k

Jakg wrote: »

Looking to get a SIM card for a tracking project - it's a small device which sends a text when requested.

To my knowledge, most networks have an annoying "you must top up every 180 days" requirement.

The credit would take an age to get used up (£10 would probably last me years!), so i'm wondering which network has the longest expiration of credit.

Ideally, i'd also like a network that takes £5 topups...

Wanna try Three? credit never expires, and you can top up £5 only if registering your debit/credit card online with it (plus getting free texts in the first 30 days for each topup).

Coverage and customer services from Three is a different issue that you might want to take a closer look

Stuart_W

bluu2k wrote: »

Wanna try Three? credit never expires, and you can top up £5 only if registering your debit/credit card online with it (plus getting free texts in the first 30 days for each topup).

PAYG from Three asks for a chargeable event at least once every 6 months - which is about the same as most of the networks. On most standard PAYG tariffs, the credit doesn't expire, it's the SIM that can be disconnected through non-use.

An Asda mobile SIM with £10 credit costs £5 at the moment, texts are 4p each.

Buzby

The reason why the 6 month limit exists, is because OFCOM stated that networks could not count SIMs as 'active' unless there was a chargeable call made every 180 days. This was to tidy up an anomaly when counting how many active customers were connected to each network. O2 previously let it run for a year, but when they were told thousands of SIMs would be classed as inactive all the networks toed the same line.