Sharing Data

[lionwing73]

just started a new contract with a 50GB data plan.

I would like to share this data with three of four other devices.  The "data sharing" section of My O2 just seems to take you around in a loop with no actual "link" to initiate the process other than pointing you to visit a shop!

Any ideas...

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

You need to nominate a lead device when you take a new contract. Without this you cannot share. You then need to call customer service to convert the other devices to be able to share. There is a monthly charge for each device you wish to add.

[EducatedDevice]

This is a query you would need to call up about on 202.

The customer service line have the necesarry systems to do this for you.

All the best,

ED

[MI5]

Unless the new phone was set up as a lead device to share data, they won't be able to do anything until you renew your contract.
You can check in your MyO2 though as it will tell you which devices you have that can share data.
You will still need to upgrade any other devices though to make use of the shared data available.

[EmilieT]

Hi @lionwing73, did you manage to set this up following @MI5 and @EducatedDevice's advice above? Let us know if you're still stuck and need further help 

[Chris2]

Hey - I've just tried doing this and they told me they couldn't do it.  Apparently, the system is only set up to enable you to send data from the lead device to other devices that do not have data allowances.  If the follow device does have a data allocation it won't let you share data across them.

This isn't the way I understood it from the promotions which seem very misleading - I expected to be able to share data from any device to any other device held on my account.

All seems a bit pointless really.  Poor show from O2 on this one.

[DennisElbow]

Be warned though.

Today, I have spoken to 02 about this as I wanted to be able to share data and I have 4 devices that can do so. The lady had never had to go through the process before and it took almost 20 minutes for her to set things up and then, before she activated the data share she advised me that if I do so the device I give data to will lose its monthly allowance, so if I have 2 lines (line A and line B), line A has 30gb of data a month and line B has 100gb of data a month.

I set up Line B as the lead device and and I link it to share data with line A. Line A loses its monthly  allowance of 30gb and is now reliant on line B for data. The 30gb from line A is gone forever.

I told the lady that this was a silly thing to do and decided against activating it.

[DennisElbow]

I just tried it too.

They said that if the device I give data to has a monthly data allowance, it is taken away leaving no data except for what you give it from your lead device.

It's quite ridiculous really. 

[herbal_t]

Unbelieveable. And yet, somehow simultaneously unsurprising.

[MDG]

Its one pot of data from the lead device shared amongst other SIMs - NOT shared in addition to what they had already. Not that hard to understand?