Virgin Media pulled out all the stops last year during the onset of the pandemic, and the service provider is stepping up again as the UK faces another national lockdown with support and freebies for its customers.
Virgin is offering free access to Pay TV and on-demand channels, free data, minutes, and texts for vulnerable customers, free learning resources, and 20GB mobile data per month for families facing financial difficulties.
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If you're a Virgin Media customer with a family that needs entertaining during lockdown, you're in luck. For the younger members, Virgin has extended its free access to the Hopster app until March 31, so you can rest easy knowing your pre-schoolers can watch educational, and world culture programmes, as well as classics like Pingu, and Sesame Street, in a a safe, ad-free environment.
For the rest of the family, a slew of factual pay TV channels are available to peruse at no extra cost, including Animal Planet HD, Crime+Investigation HD, Discovery Science, Eurosport 1 and 2 HD, and Sky History, until February 9. If you already have the Documentaries Personal Pick and the Mix bundle, Virgin is now throwing in Sky Nature SD, and Sky Documentaries SD too.
If you're looking to keep fit during lockdown, you can access the Get Fit Now app on your TiVo, and Virgin TV 6 set-top boxes. There's a bunch of free content set to drop over the next eight weeks, including pilates, and belly dancing classes. Meanwhile, you can find yoga, high-intensity interval training, and kids' PE sessions over on the Get Moving channel.
It's not just entertainment that Virgin is helping out with. As part of the Department for Education’s Get help with technology programme, eligible customers will have 20GB free mobile data per month added to their account. Virgin is also making a number of online learning resources free; Oak National Academy is the first such zero rate website, but Virgin has indicated there's more to follow.
Lastly, if you're a vulnerable customer on a Pay As You Go contract, you'll be granted 500 minutes, 500 text messages, and 1GB of extra data every month at no extra cost. If you're on a Pay Monthly contract, you'll be given unlimited minutes, and 10GB of additional data for free.
If the on-again-off-again lockdown has you working from home with the kids, you might want to check out T3's best student laptops and best laptops guides to make sure everyone has the devices they need to batten down the hatches until things let up.
