ASDA Mobile Review and Network Coverage

Table of Contents Coverage Which network does Asda Mobile use? 5G Coverage 4G Coverage 3G Coverage Plans 5G Roaming Tethering VoLTE WiFI Calling Data rollover Spending caps Unlimited data Family plans Credit Checks Awards Network Speeds Frequencies Traffic Management Customer Service Conclusion Alternatives

Coverage

Which network does Asda Mobile use?

Asda Mobile uses Vodafone’s network, which means its coverage is identical, whether you’re using 5G, 4G or 3G. This also means that anytime Vodafone’s network improves, Asda Mobile’s will do as well.

Asda Mobile Coverage

Network Type	Coverage by population
5G	Now available in 127 locations
4G	99%
3G	99%
2G	99%

5G coverage

Asda Mobile offers 5G in all the same places as Vodafone, meaning parts of at least 127 UK locations at the time of writing. The list includes (but is not limited to):

Aberdeen, Alexandria, Ambleside, Aughton (Sth Yorks), Basingstoke, Bebington, Belfast, Birkenhead, Birmingham, Bishopbriggs, Blaydon, Bolton, Bootle, Bournemouth, Bradford, Bristol, Bristol Airport, Cardiff, Cheadle and Gatley, Cheltenham, Chesterfield, Clydebank, Crawley (West Sussex), Crosby, Dewsbury, Dinas Powys, Droylsden, Dudley (West Midlands), Dundee, Eccles, Edinburgh, Eston and South Bank, Felling, Gateshead, Glasgow, Gloucester, Gosforth (Tyne & Wear), Guildford, Hebburn, Helensburgh, Horwich, Huddersfield, Huyton-with-Roby, Inner London, Isles of Scilly, Jarrow, Kingston upon Hull, Kingswood (Bristol), Lancaster, Leeds, Lisburn, Liverpool, Llandudno, Long Benton/Killingworth, Manchester, Mangotsfield, Middlesbrough, Morley, Mosborough/Highlane, Newbury, Newcastle upon Tyne, Newtownabbey, North Shields, Oldbury/Smethwick, Outer London, Paisley, Penarth, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Prescot, Prestwich, Pudsey, Rawmarsh, Reading, Rochdale, Rotherham, Salford, Sheffield, Shipley, Solihull, South Shields, Southampton, Stockport, Stockton-on-Tees, Stoke-on-Trent, Stranraer, Stretford, Sunderland, Sutton Coldfield, Swansea, Swinton and Pendlebury, Tynemouth, Urmston, Wallasey, Wallsend, Warrington, Washington, Whitley Bay, and Wolverhampton.

4G coverage

Asda Mobile has - through Vodafone - around 99% UK population coverage for 4G.

Locations with 4G coverage include but are not limited to the following cities:

Basingstoke, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bradford, Brighton, Coventry, Dudley, Edinburgh, Epsom, Ewell, Folkestone, Gateshead, Glasgow, Hatfield , Hove and Hastings, Hemel Hempstead, Huddersfield, Jarrow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Maidstone, Newbury, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oldham, Pontefract, Portsmouth, Reading, Rotherham, Sheffield, Slough, Stockport, Sunderland, Sutton Coldfield, Staines, Stourbridge, Swinton, Southampton, Tunbridge, Wakefield, Walsall, Watford, Wells and West Bromwich.

3G coverage

Asda Mobile also has around 99% 2G coverage and 99% 3G coverage.

Use Asda Mobile’s coverage checker to find out more about Asda Mobile's coverage in your area, including signal strengths and details of 5G, 4G, 3G and 2G coverage.

Plans

Asda Mobile offers a range of SIM Only bundles along with a Pay As You Go service. In either case you’ll get 4G at no extra cost, as well as 5G on many plans, and can use any or all of your data allowance to tether.

Asda Mobile SIM Only Plans

Plans Available	✔
Max Data	Unlimited
Contract length	30 days
Deals	VIEW DEALS

Asda Mobile doesn’t currently offer any Pay Monthly plans with a handset – though you can buy phones outright from the network.

However, Asda Mobile does offer a handful of SIM Only bundles, each of which lasts 30 days. These come with a maximum of unlimited data, and these bundles can be set to automatically recur every 30 days.

Note that if you opt for an unlimited data plan you also have to choose whether you want speeds to top out at 2Mbps, 10Mbps or 150Mbps. The higher the speed the higher the price, and only the top one of those can be considered 5G speeds, even though they’re all labelled as 5G plans.

Asda Mobile also offers a Pay As You Go service with rates of 4p per minute, 4p per text and 4p per megabyte of data.

With all that in mind the highlights of Asda Mobile’s plans include their low prices and their flexibility, however the lack of Pay Monthly is a major omission – if you want a new phone on contract you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Asda Mobile Perks and Policies

5G	✔
Roaming	✔
Tethering	✔
Wi-Fi Calling	✔
VoLTE	✔
Data Rollover	✖
Spending Caps	✔
Unlimited Data	✔
Family Plans	✖
Credit Check	✖

As you can see in the table above, there’s more to Asda Mobile than just the allowances in your plan. We’ve detailed these other aspects in full below.

5G

Asda Mobile offers 5G plans, however 5G doesn’t come as standard at the time of writing, so make sure you pick a plan that mentions 5G if it’s something that you want.

Roaming Destinations

Asda Mobile lets you use your bundle allowances at no extra cost in much of Europe (for a total of 36 international destinations), so you can roam without racking up big bills. However, there's no free roaming offered outside Europe.

Tethering

Asda Mobile allows you to use some or all of your monthly data allowance to tether (getting other devices online).

Wi-Fi Calling

Wi-Fi Calling means making and receiving calls over Wi-Fi using your normal number and dialler. It’s handy if you have no signal but do have access to a Wi-Fi network and it’s typically seamless. This service is offered by Asda Mobile, which is notable as not all MVNOs offer it.

VoLTE

VoLTE stands for Voice over LTE and is sometimes called 4G Calling. It’s a similar concept to Wi-Fi Calling, but allows you to call over 4G, where typically you can only call using a 2G or 3G network. With VoLTE you can stay in touch in more places, as there are areas that have a 4G signal but no other kind. VoLTE is available on Asda Mobile, so that’s one extra perk of the network.

Data rollover

There’s no data rollover on Asda Mobile, meaning that you just have one month to use up all of your data before your allowance resets and you lose any you had left over. While this is a shame, it’s also fairly standard, with networks offering data rollover being the exception rather than the norm.

Spending caps

Asda Mobile offers a spending cap, meaning that you can set a limit on how much you’re able to spend each month outside of your allowances – such as on premium rate numbers. This is a standard feature across most mobile networks, but it’s a very useful one.

Unlimited data

Asda Mobile offers 30-day SIM Only bundles with up to unlimited data, but note that these do include speed caps. There’s a slow 2Mbps option, a middling 10Mbps option, and a fast 150Mbps option, with prices rising as you move up through them. Of course, the fastest of those is the only one that you’ll get 5G speeds on.

It’s a shame to see these speed limits at all when many networks offer unlimited data with no restrictions, but at least there is a fast option.

Beyond the speed restrictions there’s no fair usage limits for unlimited data in the UK, but when roaming you’re capped at 25GB per month.

Family plans

Asda Mobile doesn’t offer any discounts for having multiple SIMs on your account, or really any tools for managing them, as you can only manage one SIM from your online account – though you can register multiple SIM cards to the same email address. Proper family plans would be handy, but at least Asda Mobile is a fairly cheap network, so multi-SIM discounts are less essential.

Credit checks

Asda Mobile won’t credit check you whether you choose a 30-day SIM Only bundle or just Pay As You Go, so it’s an ideal choice for anyone who has a poor credit rating.

Awards

Asda Mobile was awarded Best Network for Customer Service at the Uswitch Mobile Awards 2021, so you can be confident that if there’s a problem, it will be dealt with well. Or at least, you’d think you could be, but elsewhere its customer service isn’t so well rated, as we’ll get to further down.

Asda Mobile hasn’t won any other recent, major awards, but we’ll update this section if that changes.

Network

Network Speeds

Opensignal – Mobile Network Experience, September 2021, and April 2020

Network	Download/upload speeds	4G latency (ms)
EE	44/9.7Mbps	36.0ms
Three	25.2/6.3Mbps	48.3ms
Asda Mobile (Vodafone)	21.6/7.4Mbps	39.0ms
O2	17.1/5.4Mbps	38.1ms

We don’t have much data on Asda Mobile’s speeds, but they’re likely to be similar to Vodafone’s. In an Opensignal report from September 2021, then, Vodafone was found to have average download speeds of 21.6Mbps, and average upload speeds of 7.4Mbps, which are the third and second highest on test, respectively. Those results factor in a combination of 5G, 4G and 3G.

4G latency (the time it takes for a network to respond to a request) is slightly less good though. Lower is better here, and Vodafone has the second highest latency of the four main networks in tests carried out in April 2020, with an older test being used because latency isn’t included in recent reports.

On 5G, Asda Mobile’s average download speeds could be around 143.6Mbps, based on Point Topic tests of Vodafone from September 2020, while its median 5G download speed might be around 159Mbps, going by Ookla data covering Vodafone in the first half of 2021.

Traffic management

Asda Mobile doesn’t publish its traffic management policies, but chances are that they’re similar to most networks, in that emergency calls will always be prioritised and in general you won’t notice traffic management in play, unless there’s a fault on the network or your use is classed as excessive.

Network Frequencies

Asda Mobile Network Frequencies

Frequency	Frequency Band	Network
800MHz	Band 20	4G
900MHz	Band 8	2G & 3G
1400MHz SDL	Band 32	4G
1800MHz	Band 3	2G & 4G
2100MHz	Band 1	3G & 4G
2600MHz	Band 7	4G
3400MHz	n78	5G
3600MHz	n77	5G

Being a Vodafone MVNO, Asda Mobile uses Vodafone’s spectrum bands, which means it presumably has access to all of the bands above.

That leaves the network able to deliver consistent 4G services both in urban and rural locations, indoors and out.

For 5G, it should have access to the 3400MHz and 3600MHz bands, which Vodafone currently uses for this.

You can find in depth details of those bands in our 4G and 5G frequencies guide.

Customer Service

Customer service can be hard to judge, but on Trustpilot, Asda Mobile has a rating of just 1.4/5 at the time of writing, which is considered ‘bad’.

That’s only based on 705 ratings though, which is far fewer than most networks have on there, so it may not be an accurate representation of what to expect. That’s especially true as the network also won a Uswitch award for its customer service in 2021.

Conclusion

Asda Mobile has low prices and short-term plans that last just 30 days, giving you more flexibility than some networks.

With Wi-Fi Calling and 4G Calling allowed too and Vodafone’s robust infrastructure it’s a solid choice, but free roaming is limited to parts of Europe (which many networks offer), so Asda Mobile isn’t ideal if you travel a lot.

It's also a write-off if you want a new phone on contract since it doesn't offer any Pay Monthly plans. Overall it’s a very average network, but it will suit some users.

Alternatives

Vodafone is one possible alternative to Asda Mobile, since it offers the same coverage. Vodafone has the advantage of a far wider range of plans, including smartphones that you can get on contract. It also includes more perks and extras, like the VeryMe Rewards service and optional entertainment subscriptions. But its plans are typically more expensive too.

Other networks with the same coverage include Virgin Mobile, Lebara, and Talkmobile, although in the case of Talkmobile you won’t currently get 5G.

If Vodafone’s coverage isn’t a factor for you though then check out all our network reviews for other options.