You can use your phone as a personal hotspot. This is also called tethering your phone.
We don’t recommend using your phone as a personal hotspot long-term, or for transferring large amounts of data. SIMs on standard mobile tariffs are designed for calls, texts and general data use, like daily browsing. They’re not made for being used as, or in, mobile broadband devices, as this can eat up a lot of data. Find out more about excessive data use.
If you’re looking for a mobile broadband device, take a look at our dongles and hotspots.
If you do need to use your phone as a personal hotspot as a short-term solution, you can share your data signal with other smartphones, laptops, tablets or iPad devices.
When you use your phone as a hotspot, all connected devices will be using data from your phone. Depending on the amount of devices connected, and what they’re being used for, your data could be used up very quickly.
Setting up a personal hotspot
To use your phone as a personal hotspot, you’ll need a 4G or 5G connection.
Pay Monthly customers
If you’re a Pay Monthly customer, simply switch Personal Hotspot on to get started. You’ll usually find this within your phone’s settings.
Pay As You Go customers
If you’re a Pay As You Go customer, you can now tether up to five devices to your iPhone if you have:
An iPhone 5 or newer.
iOS 10.1 or newer - to update your iOS software, go to Settings, then tap General, and select Software Update to check if an update is available.
Your carrier setting as version O2 26.1 – to update your carrier settings, go to Settings, then tap General, and select About. If available, a pop up should appear to change the carrier setting.
If you’re a Pay As You Go customer with a Windows phone:
Go to Settings, then tap Internet sharing, Share over, and select WiFi. Then make sure Sharing is switched to On.
Once you've done this, you can connect to the hotspot the same way you'd connect to any WiFi network. You can also pair devices over Bluetooth, or use a USB cable.
You can set a password for your hotspot to stop other people from connecting to it. Just give your password to whoever you want to share your data with.
Last updated: 07/04/2025
