With many households having several people using a mobile phone, there are some opportunities to make savings by all using the same network on a single plan.
Here's what's on offer from some of the biggest networks, along with any optional extras such as parental limits on how much children can spend, or emergency call credit for times when your kids urgently need to call you.
O2
O2 doesn't have a specific family plan, so each member will need a separate contract or pay-as-you-go SIM. Instead it offers a "Bolt On" service for families and other groups. One person must pay an extra £7.65 a month, whether they are on a monthly contract of pay as you go, and can then choose any four other 02 customers (including both friends and family.) All five customers then get unlimited free calls and texts to one another.
The network also offers a couple of free services that allow you to set up family calendars and have text reminders of appointments automatically sent out. These don't have to be done through a specific family plan, but all recipients must be O2 users.
Orange
Orange offers a dedicated family plan management scheme, Your Group. This means that although the various members must each have their own contract or pay-as-you-go deal, the various costs can be built into a single itemized bill. There's no discount for this, but there's also no charge for the service, and everyone covered by the scheme can call one another free of charge.
The main account holder can also set an automatic monthly or weekly payment to top up pay-as-you-go accounts, ranging from £2.50 a week to £30 a month. PAYG customers covered by the account can have three emergency calls (one up to 60 seconds, two each up to 30 seconds) once their credit runs out.
T Mobile
This company doesn't have a specific family plan, but does have a free group calls service that works in much the same way as O2's Bolt On. The T-Mobile deal is called a Family Booster and also allows one person to pay to cover free calls and texts within a group of five customers. It costs £5.10 a month for the person who pays. The others can be on any T-Mobile plan, but the person paying must be on the Combi, Flext or Solo packages. There is a fair use policy on the free calls, though there are few if any customer complaints about being caught out by this.
Vodafone
As with O2 and T-Mobile, this network also offers a free calls service between friends/family on the same network. It's called Vodafone Family and involves one customer paying £7 a month. Unlike the other networks, it allows six people in the group (all of whom must be on Vodafone), but the deal doesn't cover texts.
