Blyk Offers More Freedom, But At A Price

Blyk the mobile phone network which offers free allowance of texts and minutes to people aged between 16 and 24 living in mainland Britain, has a new price plan. This removes the old allowance of 217 texts and 43 minutes and instead gives you £15 of balance to use how you like. The main advantage of this is that you can now send MMS and browse the internet without having to top-up.

However, as sweet as this sounds, you have a much lower allowance than before. At 8p a text, they may be cheaper when compared to other UK mobile phone networks, but £15 of balance only gives you 187 texts if you don’t use any other services that cost, like calling. Previously, you were getting 217 texts. On the other hand, you do get more minutes, a total of 62.5 minutes (at 24p per minute) to be precise. If we were to use the current rates on the old plan, we would get a balance of £27.68 (calculated (8p * 217 text) + (43 minutes * 24p)). A loss of £12.68 balance. Which in turn for them is a lower cost of operating their business.