Hi everyone,
Internet settings are a big thing for giffgaff. If you don't know, in order for a phone to access the internet it needs some settings installed and historically this has been a bit of a faff on giffgaff. However, as some of you may know through this thread, we've been planning some changes to settings for a while, but it's taken some time to come through because we decided that we'd rather do it right than do it quickly. There has been quite a lot going on behind the scenes to get everything sorted out and to make settings problems much less frequent.
The Good News
Most phone manufacturers will soon start including giffgaff's APN settings in their software updates, for most newer phones. This means that simply putting a giffgaff SIM card into a phone with the settings will automatically set up the internet and choose giffgaff as the carrier. Ultimately we should see far fewer members coming to the community with internet questions, which is nice.
Not every manufacturer is doing it quite yet, but they will soon, so regardless of phone the first piece of advice that you should give is to update your software and then check carriers to see if giffgaff comes up.
The Death of 2020
2020 has been a long serving, loyal and sometimes frustrating part of the giffgaff community. It has seen good times and bad, laughter and frowns, happiness and sorrow, but time has come for it to pass into legend and leave the way for more reliable methods of updating settings to lead the way.
From next week we will be turning 2020 off for all phones. Members will still receive a text when they text it, but no phone will ever receive the configuration message with the correct settings by texting 2020. This means that from today "Text 'settings' to 2020" will never be the correct answer again. It'll take a little time to get used to, which is why we have this grace period between announcing the change and turning it off.
The New Settings
We have also changed the settings for all phones. This isn't a paradigm change, and the old settings will still work, but going forward it is a good idea to have the new ones. These settings are for all devices, including iPhones and iPads. iPhones will no longer have their own special settings, which is good for streamlining things.
- Username: "giffgaff"
- APN: "giffgaff.com"
- password: [Leave blank]
- Proxy: [Leave blank]
iPhones and iPads can't edit the proxy manually, so it's best to reset the settings and then use the My giffgaff app go to giff.ly/iphonesettings to update them. Android and other OS phones will have to update it manually if a software update didn't work.
The Pop Quiz
This is all a lot of information to take in, but the good news is that we have drafted up a Pop Quiz for you all to take to get to grips with the changes. It also goes over a few topics from older quizzes, just to give everyone a refresher.
This is an Approved Helper quiz, so you will get 100 payback points for completing it, but because it is a Pop Quiz it will only be available for a limited period (a few weeks) and there is no badge associated with it. Here's a link to the quiz - Pop Quiz: Death of 2020
As always, if you have any questions then ask them here and I'll be happy to help. All the best,
Will
Former Community Manager
