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Home » blog » How to top up your friend’s mobile phone without knowing what network they’re on

How to top up your friend’s mobile phone without knowing what network they’re on

Published January 28, 2011 by lawsie 4 Comments

A.K.A how to top up your kid’s cellphones!

This article explains how to top up third party mobile pay-as-you-go phones in the United Kingdom.

Topping up friend’s mobile phones is something that (for whatever reason) we sometimes feel the need to do, but sometimes our friends aren’t keen on our ‘charity’ so we can’t ask them what network they’re on (so that we can buy them a top-up card).

Let me try to clarify by telling you how I came to need to find out to top up a friend’s pay as you go mobile phone:  A friend of mine is having a spot of minor bother (nothing serious) and I want to stay in touch with him, but he never has any credit on his phone, so text message conversations are very one sided.  His lack of credit also means that if I text him to ask what network he is on (so I can buy him a top-up voucher) he won’t be able to text me back to let me know!

How to top up your friend’s mobile phone without knowing what network they’re on:

  1. Go to https://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/numbering/s7.xls and look up the first part of your friend’s mobile phone number, it’s the first column on the Ofcom spreadsheet (the SABC column).  The network your friend is on is listed in the ‘Communications provider’ column, which makes sense doesn’t it.
  2. Go to https://www.topupsdirect.co.uk/ and click the big ‘buy now’ button and follow the instructions.  Payment can be made using PayPal.  You will be charged a £2.50 handing fee but I think that’s quite a reasonable fee.
  3. Your friend will be sent a text message telling them that they’ve been given ‘pay as you go’ credit, at this stage you might want to text them to tell them what’s going on!

Last Updated on February 18, 2023

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: mobile phones, technical article

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Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    September 30, 2011 at 10:04 am

    Great idea, but fails if they have ported their number to a different network.

    At a time when you know their phone to be off ring it and listen to the voicemail greeting. If it is the default, you might be told the network or you might recognise which voice it is.

    Reply
  2. Mobile Phones says

    July 12, 2012 at 10:13 am

    I have gone through the article and the idea you have share is really good and useful but all the way with different loop falls.

    Reply
    • Andrew Culture says

      July 12, 2012 at 11:36 am

      Ah that's a shame, I wrote these instructions a while ago so the details may have changed.

      Reply
  3. Anonymous says

    July 29, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    topup any bangladeshi mobile from this site

    https://www.bdtopup4u.com

    Reply

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