Vodafone offer six months free Gigafast broadband

Those taking Vodafone's fastest Gigafast 900 package could save £330 over the six months, while those opting for Gigafast 100 would save £84 over a three month free period.

All contracts are subject to a 24-month minimum term, and the full price of the package will be paid from month seven.

Vodafone Gigafast is currently live in 15 cities including Aberdeen, Leeds, Liverpool and Bristol.

Credit: kailim/Shutterstock.com

What is the offer?

Under the offer, new and upgrading Vodafone Gigafast customers will pay nothing for the first six months of their 24-month contract on the fastest packages and nothing for three months on 100Mb and 200Mb deals.

These offers are available in areas covered by their partnerships with CityFibre and Openreach.

Customers could save up to £330 over the six months if they took Vodafone's fastest package. Here are the savings and subsequently monthly costs:

• Gigafast 100 - saving of £84 over three-month free period then £28 per month
• Gigafast 200 - saving of £105 over three-month free period then £35 per month
• Gigafast 500 - saving of £270 over three-month free period then £45 per month
• Gigafast 900 - saving of £330 over three-month free period then £55 per month

Vodafone say the deal could be particularly useful for customers looking to switch to faster broadband before their current broadband contract is up - they would not be paying double for those months.

Is it a good deal?

Headline savings of £330 are tempting, although customers should remember the remainder of the Gigafast 900 contract will cost them £55 per month, a total of £990 over the lifetime of the 24-month deal.

Yet potential customers should remember some other ultrafast and full fibre providers only require customers to sign up to 18-month contracts. While some may prefer longer deals, it's something to bear in mind.

In addition, Vodafone Gigafast isn't nationwide. The service is only active in parts of the following cities and towns: Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Leeds, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Peterborough, Southend-on-Sea and Stirling.

So, many who might find this deal attractive will likely miss out due to their location. Read more about different fast broadband options or compare broadband deals in your area.

Effective marketing campaign

As an advertisement for their Gigafast broadband, Vodafone's free six months deal is arguably more effective than the advert banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in April 2019 for misleading language around their pricing/speed structure.

If customers are looking to switch to faster broadband and they're in a Gigafast area, the ability to essentially leave a different provider without paying double for up to six months is attractive.

However, anyone considering a switch to a new broadband provider should look at the overall picture rather than just the prices on offer.

As our review of Vodafone broadband demonstrates, the company doesn't have the best complaints record and have topped the table for the most complaints for five of the seven quarters we have Ofcom data for.

A caveat to that, though, is that superfast broadband from Vodafone runs exclusively on the Openreach superfast network, which makes it a different animal to Gigafast broadband running on CityFibre and Openreach full fibre networks.

So, using Vodafone's customer service record as a way of assessing whether their Gigafast service is any good does have its flaws.