There are now two times in your life where you’ll need to check and see if your phone supports eSIM. The first is if you are travelling outside Europe and want to use a service like Airalo or Sim Local. When I travelled to China, I used the former and absolutely loved it. It worked a charm. The other time you’ll be likely wondering if your phone supports an eSIM or not is this weekend ahead of Lidl Connect launching in Ireland, with unlimited calls, texts, data and 50GB of roaming data for just €8.99.
And finding out if your phone does support eSIM or not, couldn’t be easier.
How to check if your phone supports eSIM
You can see if your phone supports eSIM by opening your dialler. This is where you would usually call people from. And instead of typing in a phone number, type in *#06#.
This will automatically bring up a screen showing your phones IMEI and some other information.
What you are hoping to see is an EID Number. If your phone has one of these, it supports eSIM.
It’s worth noting that some phones will require you to manually activate eSIM before this EID number will appear. So if you have a fairly new phone and no EID, it’s worth searching SIM in your settings and looking for an option to generally activate eSIM.
What phones support eSIM?
eSIM is supported by most modern smartphones being released over the past few years. However, that doesn’t neccesarily stretch to mid-range or entry-levels smartphones, alongside some older models too. It’s best you don’t assume your phone supports eSIM, and that you check using the above instructions.
eSIM became broadly available on new phones as far back as the iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Today, the likes of the iPhone Air, iPhone Duo and some new Google Pixel phones in the U.S. are launching without any physical SIM support at all, so this is generally the way the market is going.
Why does eSIM matter with Lidl Connect?
Lidl wants to keep the costs of running Lidl Connect as low as possible so the network can bring you the price of just €8.99 at launch. This is also why they charge €0.99 for a physical SIM card in store. It’s all about the cost, and it’s a fair trade to keep that price so incredibly low. You will be able to purchase your Lidl Connect eSIM directly in the Lidl Plus app, without having to go to a store at all. You can learn more about Lidl Connect over on our YouTube Channel.
From today, Friday 2 October, anyone under 18 is banned from riding an e-scooter in a public place in Ireland. The minimum age has risen from 16 to 18, after Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien and Minister of State Seán Canney signed the regulations on 22 September. On the same day, the fees for getting a seized e-scooter back have doubled to €80 for detention and the first day of storage, and €30 for every day after that.
It’s the second major change in a month, landing four weeks after helmets and high-vis became mandatory for every rider. The whole crackdown traces back to July, when Temple Street reported six children in intensive care with e-scooter injuries in a single fortnight. I’ve been following it closely on Goosed, from arguing that Ireland needs e-scooter enforcement rather than a ban to the union representing Gardaí admitting enforcement of the new e-scooter laws would be weak. Today’s ban is the most significant step yet, and the one most likely to be tested on the street.
What does the e-scooter ban for under 18s mean?
If you’re under 18, you can no longer legally ride an e-scooter on any road, cycle lane or other public place in Ireland, full stop. That includes 16 and 17-year-olds who were riding a fully compliant scooter perfectly legally yesterday.
The change raises the age set in the Road Traffic (Electric Scooters) Regulations 2024, the rules that made e-scooters legal here in May 2024. Nothing else about what makes a scooter legal has moved. It still has to be capped at 20km/h, rated at no more than 400W and weigh under 25kg, and riders now need a helmet and high-vis on top. Gardaí can seize a scooter being ridden in breach of the rules, and with today’s fee increase, a week in storage will set you back €260 before you see it again.
Who gets fined if an under 18 rides an e-scooter?
The owner of the scooter can be, as well as the rider. The 2024 regulations already say that when an e-scooter is used in a public place in breach of the rules, its owner also commits an offence. Because the age limit sits in those same rules, an under-18 caught on a scooter puts the person who owns it on the hook too.
The Government has been clear that this applies whether or not the owner is the child’s parent. So if you’ve been letting your 17-year-old borrow your scooter for the trip to school, or lending one to a niece or nephew, that stops today.
Can shops still sell e-scooters to under 18s?
Yes, for now. The ban on selling e-scooters to under 18s isn’t part of today’s change. It’s waiting on new legislation due later this year, the same bill that’s meant to bring in e-scooter registration and reclassify them as mechanically propelled vehicles. Until it passes, the existing offence of supplying an e-scooter to a child is still pegged at under 16.
That leaves a gap where a 17-year-old can walk into a shop and buy an e-scooter they’re not allowed to ride. The Tánaiste has already urged parents to stop thinking of e-scooters as toys, and that message matters more than ever with Christmas a couple of months away.
Why did the e-scooter ban for under 18s take so long?
It was announced in July alongside the helmet and high-vis rules, with all three due in August. In August, the age change was pulled after the Attorney General advised that primary legislation would be needed, and it was due to be folded into the bigger e-scooter bill instead. Then in September, the Department said the EU’s usual 12-week standstill period for new technical rules no longer applied, and the ban was brought in by ministerial regulation after all. The age of 16 was set the same way back in 2024, so how that squares with the August advice still hasn’t been explained.
Will the under-18 e-scooter ban be enforced?
On the evidence of the last month, I wouldn’t bet on it. Early signs are that compliance with the helmet and high-vis rules is low, and a month on, the €100 on-the-spot fine for riding without them still hasn’t been brought in. It’s due to arrive alongside an increase in all e-scooter fixed charge notices from €50 to €100, which the Minister says is coming shortly.
Gardaí are clearly busy, with 754 e-scooters seized in the first three months of this year alone. The problem is the riders who don’t stop. The Garda Representative Association has already said publicly that Gardaí have no safe way to pursue them, and a 16-year-old on an overpowered scooter who was ignoring the rules yesterday has no new reason to pull in today.
While some are saying compliance has been somewhat low, I strongly disagree. While there remains some riders not wearing a helmet or hiviz, personally I’ve seen more regular riders complying than not. Now, there is a cohort of overpowered scooters that don’t comply, but they were never going to, highlighting the weakness in the Government’s overall approach.
To be honest, I’m not against an age limit on principle. When I set out how Ireland could make electric scooters safe without a ban in July, I argued the minimum age should apply to riding, not just buying, and the Government has now gone further than the 16 I suggested. That said, the children who ended up in intensive care this summer were mostly under 16, and they were already banned. A higher age limit only protects anyone if it’s enforced, and every rule announced this summer has arrived late, in pieces, or without the penalty meant to give it teeth.
Lidl Connect goes on sale on Monday 5 October, and it’s the cheapest way onto a mobile network in Ireland. For €8.99 a month, you get unlimited calls, texts and 5G data, 50GB of roaming data and 100 international minutes, all supported by Eir’s network. That price is locked in for life for the first 100,000 customers who sign up through the Lidl Plus app by 31 December, after which the plan costs €12.99.
To put that in context, my roundup of the best SIM-only deals in Ireland has 48 on top at €9.99 a month, but that’s a six-month offer before the price goes back to €12.99. Lidl Connect’s €8.99 is for life, which makes it by far the best offer on the Irish market. Numbers-wise, this move is a no-brainer. Quality-wise, it remains to be seen.
As soon as it was announced, the comments online all circled the same worry. People wanted to know what the catch was, and whether Lidl customers would be treated as second-class citizens on Eir’s network.
To find out what’s going on under the bonnet, I spoke with Luke Kehoe, Lead Analyst at Ookla, the company behind Speedtest. Ookla already has test data from Lidl Connect SIMs, and while there is a catch, I don’t think it’s going to put many off.
Will Lidl Connect get the same coverage as Eir and Gomo?
Yes. Lidl Connect uses the exact same masts as Eir and GoMo, so wherever you get signal on Eir, you’ll get it on Lidl Connect. Wherever you see 4G or 5G, Luke told me, “it’s identical to what you’d have on GoMo or on Eir domestically”. Download and upload speeds are broadly the same as Eir’s own customers get too.
You’ll still hear people say they never get coverage on Lidl Connect in the pub when they always did on Eir. It’s not true. There are variables like the phone using or the room you’re in using that can make a difference, but the masts are the same.
So if Lidl Connect customers do get a slightly different experience, it won’t be down to coverage or being pushed to the back of the queue. It’s down to how Lidl Connect is built.
Where Lidl Connect is different from Eir and Gomo
A mobile network relies on two main physical things. The masts carry the signal between your phone and the network. Second is the core – the network’s switchboard, checking that your SIM and plan are active and sending your calls, texts and data where they need to go. On both Eir and GoMo, all of that happens in Ireland, so your data goes from your phone to the mast, through Eir’s core in Dublin and out to the internet.
Lidl sells Lidl Connect, but it’s run by 1GLOBAL, a telecoms company that specialises primarily in travel eSIMs. Your data still travels over Eir’s masts and network, but before it reaches the internet, it takes a detour through 1GLOBAL’s gateways, which in pre-launch testing, appear to be located in London or Amsterdam, then comes back the same way.
The reason is likely cost. Luke told me it’s “simply cheaper to route the traffic through there than to go build another full core network in Dublin”. An Irish core would be a serious expense, and I’m sure nobody wants to add that to a business selling SIMs for €8.99 a month.
It has been reported that 1GLOBAL does have some Irish core infrastructure, so potentially it could come online at a later date. But not yet.
The catch is latency
Ookla started seeing Lidl Connect test SIMs in its Speedtest data from 13 May, most likely in the hands of Lidl staff. Their median latency was 59.6 milliseconds versus just 32.5 milliseconds for Eir’s own customers on the same network. That’s an extra 26 milliseconds, or nearly double the latency.
Image: Courtesy of Ookla
Latency is the time between your phone asking for something and the answer coming back. Think back to the news in the 90s, when the presenter in the studio asked a reporter in the field a question and there was an awkward wait before the reporter heard it and started answering. That wait is latency. It’s the same concept here, but don’t expect the impact to be anywhere near as dramatic as that newscast. Lidl Connect’s extra delay is 26 thousandths of a second, a fraction of the time it takes to blink.
In certain circumstances you may feel a bit of lag, but for the vast majority of people it won’t be perceptible. Luke agreed, saying that for everyday users “the difference would be not massively perceptible, especially for browsing the web, using TikTok, Instagram, anything like that”. Sending photos and downloading updates won’t be affected at all. Where you might notice it is on video calls and gaming, and when you’re at home, you’re on your Wi-Fi anyway.
Important note here for parents. If your kids are avid mobile gamers, Lidl Connect probably isn’t a great idea, because those extra milliseconds are the difference between landing a headshot or taking one. I also wouldn’t stick a Lidl Connect SIM in a router to run your home broadband. Luke called that “something to test and try”, but I’ll be more blunt. If you’re planning to run your entire gaming setup off it, I think it’ll be a disaster.
This is pre-launch data, and Luke did say “that’s the test data that we have for Lidl, so I would stress that could change after launch”. With 1GLOBAL’s gateways sitting in London and Amsterdam, though, I wouldn’t expect the picture to change much.
Sky Mobile customers already live with this
Lidl Connect isn’t the first Irish mobile brand to send data abroad before it reaches the internet. Sky Mobile, An Post Mobile and Lycamobile do the same. Ookla’s data puts Sky Mobile at 62.3 milliseconds and An Post Mobile at 69.0, so Lidl’s test SIMs sit level with Sky and ahead of An Post. By comparison, Ookla’s data shows that Tesco Mobile is the only MVNO that doesn’t see any latency penalty because all of the network’s traffic is routed through a core in Ireland.
Here’s the telling bit. Over the past two years, Sky Mobile has gained more switchers than any other mobile brand in Ireland, according to Ookla. If latency was putting ordinary people off, Sky would be losing customers, not winning them. As Luke put it, latency “is nothing new for the MVNOs in the Irish market, like Sky, which is similar and which has done very well itself”.
Lidl Connect roaming could be one of Ireland’s best
While the latency is brought into the picture because of 1GLOBAL’s involvement, they also bring some big positives to the table. 50GB of roaming data is massive. I’ve hit roaming limits of
around 18GB with Three when away for a week or two. Lidl’s allowance is high, right up there with the likes of Eir, whose SIM-only plan comes with 65GB, and Vodafone who offer up to 80GB on some bill pay plans.
That allowance comes from 1GLOBAL’s existing roaming agreements, not Eir. Luke says he “would have a lot more confidence in the roaming integration here because of 1GLOBAL”, adding “that’s their whole bread and butter”.
Expect some teething problems. Lidl Plus coped with the rush for Katie Taylor pre-sale tickets, but a network launch has more moving parts, from setting up eSIMs to moving people’s numbers across. I had GoMo when it launched at €9.99 and got rid of it quite quickly because the launch was disastrous, for me at least. I’m willing to roll the dice again here, so I’ll be picking up my SIM on Monday and living with whatever launch issues come with it, through gritted teeth.
Neither Luke nor I can confirm yet whether Lidl Connect supports Wi-Fi calling or 4G calling (VoLTE), which GoMo and Clear Mobile both offer. The good news is that it’s a rolling monthly plan you can cancel at any time, so trying it costs very little.
Should you switch to Lidl Connect?
For most people, yes. You get the same masts and speeds as Eir, potentially one of the best roaming allowances going, and a price nobody else in Ireland matches. The trade-off is a small bump in latency that most people will never notice.
Even Luke, who, as he said himself obsessed with network performance, would make the move himself. “I would still likely be very happy to use this as primary connection in my phone, but the proof will be in the pudding with further testing after launch”, he told me.
The caveat that both he and I would make is that all of this is based on pre-launch test data. It could turn out to be absolutely atrocious, with all of us running away from it just as quick. Still, for €8.99 a month, I’ll grin and bear a few launch problems if they can work them out.
And boy, are the Irish public switching. Ookla’s data also shows that Vodafone and Three are the biggest losers in the Irish market, with Sky, an MVNO with average latency greater than that of Lidl Connect, being the biggest winners. That tells me that the only negative on paper doesn’t make much different to most people who’ve switched in recent years.
SEGA and Sports Interactive have confirmed that Football Manager 27 launches on 10 November, with the PC and Mac version, the console edition and the Netflix mobile game all arriving on the same day.
FM27 will be sold on Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Xbox PC app, and it’s included for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers from launch. FM27 Console lands on Xbox and PS5 on day one too, while FM27 Mobile comes through Netflix, so you’ll need a Netflix subscription to play it on your phone. SEGA quotes a retail price of £49.99, with no euro price confirmed yet.
When can you play Football Manager 27?
The full release is 10 November, but a Launch Preview version, effectively an early access build, will be playable one to two weeks before that. That puts it somewhere between late October and the first few days of November. SEGA says details on how to get into the Launch Preview will follow, along with digital pre-purchase and any launch discounts, so pre-orders aren’t open just yet.
Those are the only platforms confirmed for now. SEGA says further platforms will be announced later.
How much will FM27 cost in Ireland?
The only price SEGA has given so far is £49.99. Irish pricing hasn’t been confirmed, though Football Manager 26 launched at €59.99 on Steam, which gives a fair idea of where FM27 is likely to land. If you already pay for PC Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate, you won’t need to buy it separately on PC.
What’s changing in FM27
FM27 follows Football Manager 26, which launched in November 2025 on a new engine after FM25 was cancelled outright. Sports Interactive has said it’s sticking with that newer engine while bringing back ideas and features players missed from older editions.
The studio’s pre-launch deep dives have focused on navigation, with fewer clicks to get around, full-screen layouts and more customisation options. The latest one covers the match day experience, with changes to presentation and atmosphere around each fixture. How much of a difference those changes make will be clearer once people get their hands on the Launch Preview.
Full breakdowns of each deep dive are on the official Football Manager 27 website, and we’ll update this piece once euro pricing and pre-purchase details are confirmed.
Customers of Claude across multiple regions are reporting widespread issues accessing Claude, with many encountering repeated authentication errors. The outage was confirmed on Downdector The problem surfaced on Tuesday afternoon, with complaints appearing on social media and discussion forums.
What users are experiencing
According to reports online, users are seeing error messages stating they are “temporarily unable to authenticate” when attempting to log in or start new conversations. Some users describe being locked out entirely, while others report intermittent access with frequent disconnections.
The issue appears to be global, with affected users reporting from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and other regions. At the time of initial reports, Claude’s official status page had not yet been updated to reflect the outage.
Context and history
This is not the first time Claude has experienced service disruptions. The platform has faced intermittent outages during periods of high traffic, particularly following major model releases or infrastructure changes. However, authentication-specific failures of this scale are less common.
For comparison, similar authentication outages at other major AI and cloud platforms have historically been resolved within 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the underlying cause.
What to do
Users experiencing the issue are advised to:
Check status.claude.com for official updates
Avoid repeatedly refreshing, which may compound server load
Wait for Anthropic to resolve the authentication problem
No official statement from Anthropic has been released at the time of writing.
An X account that posted footage said to show racist chanting aimed at Adam Idah during Ireland’s Nations League win over Israel has reportedly been suspended. An Irish sports journalist pointed out the suspension on X, but X itself hasn’t said anything publicly about the account or why it’s no longer available.
Right now, the only confirmed detail is that the account is gone. X hasn’t confirmed that the suspension has anything to do with the footage, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing.
What happened at the Ireland v Israel Nations League match
Ireland beat Israel 3-0 at the Nagyerdei Stadium in Debrecen, Hungary, on Sunday 27 September. The fixture was politically charged before a ball was kicked. Ireland’s players wore black armbands, bowed their heads during the Israeli anthem and didn’t shake hands with their opponents.
Before half-time, Jayson Molumby asked the referee and fourth official to listen to chanting from a section of the small travelling Israeli support, which he believed was aimed at Idah. Short clips shared across X afterwards appear to capture monkey noises as Idah passed near that part of the crowd, and at least one of them has passed a million views.
According to the FAI, a UEFA delegate said the matter couldn’t be investigated because the correct protocols weren’t followed on the night. The match officials, including the German referee, said they hadn’t heard anything. The FAI is now reviewing footage itself, including pitchside microphone audio, and says it will pass any evidence to UEFA. The association has also said Idah isn’t sure whether he heard the chants and is unaffected.
Why was the X account suspended?
Nobody outside X knows, and X hasn’t said. A suspended profile shows a generic notice. It doesn’t tell you which rule was supposedly broken, whether a person or an automated system made the call, or whether the suspension is temporary.
X suspends accounts for all sorts of reasons, from spam and ban evasion to hateful conduct. A post that goes viral during a heated news cycle also tends to draw a flood of reports from every direction. Any of that could explain it. So could something completely unrelated to the match.
Does the suspension affect the FAI’s review?
Probably not much. The FAI’s review is built on its own analysts’ footage and pitchside audio rather than one account’s upload, and copies of the clip were reposted and screen-recorded long before any suspension.
What does get lost is the original post, along with its timestamp, caption and replies. If you’re trying to trace where a clip came from, or check whether it’s been edited, the original upload is the most useful version. Once it disappears behind a suspension notice, all that’s left are copies of copies. That’s how controversial football footage moves now. It reaches millions within hours, and any moderation decisions follow quietly and after the fact.
What X owes the account holder under EU law
Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, a platform that suspends an account has to give the account holder a clear and specific statement of reasons. That statement must set out the rule or legal basis it relied on and explain how to appeal. X’s European operation is based in Dublin, and Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland’s Digital Services Coordinator, so this is squarely an Irish regulatory matter as well as a football one.
In practice, the account holder should know exactly why they were suspended, even if nobody else does. That statement goes to them, not to the public. The wider picture only becomes clear if they choose to share it or X explains itself. Given how much attention the footage has attracted, one line from X would clear this up quickly.
What happens next
Ireland host Austria in Dublin on Thursday 1 October. The return fixture against Israel is scheduled for Sunday 4 October, although the players and the FAI are still discussing whether to fulfil it. We’ll update this piece if X, the FAI or UEFA confirm anything further.
Google has refreshed its satellite imagery of the Gaza Strip on Google Earth and Google Maps, and the new views show whole neighbourhoods in Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza City that Israel’s military campaign has reduced to rubble and bare, cleared ground. The updated images spread quickly across social media on Monday, 28 September, with people placing them side by side with older captures of the same streets.
With Naza set to stream next month for free globally, you won’t have to wait until then to see the Israeli destruction of Palestine.
Google hasn’t confirmed when the new images were captured or when they went live. Either way, they’re the clearest look most people outside Gaza will get at what Israel has done to the strip. Israel has not allowed foreign journalists independent access to Gaza, so a free, publicly available satellite map carries more weight here than it would almost anywhere else.
Among those sharing the images was Dublin MEP Barry Andrews, who posted on X that “the updated Google satellite images of Gaza are quite incredible, for all to see”.
What the new Google Earth images of Gaza show
In short, destruction on a scale that ground-level photos struggle to get across. In the south, large parts of Rafah and Khan Younis appear flattened, with former residential blocks now showing up as grey rubble fields or scraped earth. In Gaza City, the area in and around Al Shifa Hospital, the strip’s largest medical complex, shows extensive damage.
The pictures line up with the work of the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), which has been tracking damage from orbit throughout the war. Its assessment found that around 201,290 structures, roughly 82 per cent of all buildings in Gaza, had been damaged to some degree by mid-2026.
The difference is access. UNOSAT’s analysis lives in specialist reports. Google Earth puts the same picture in front of anyone with a phone or a browser, and lets them zoom in on a specific street, school or home they know.
Why Google Earth images of Gaza were blurry for years
For a long time, the blurriness was down to US law rather than a lack of satellites. The Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, passed in 1997, barred American companies from distributing satellite imagery of Israel at a higher resolution than was available from non-US sources. In practice, that capped imagery of Israel, and of Gaza and the West Bank alongside it, at two metres per pixel. At that level, anything smaller than a car dissolves into a smudge.
The rule was loosened in July 2020, when the US Department of Commerce accepted that sharper imagery of the region was already on sale from foreign providers and raised the limit to 40 centimetres per pixel. That’s about the width of an adult’s shoulders, sharp enough to make out individual cars, collapsed roofs and piles of debris.
Even after that change, Gaza’s imagery on Google’s platforms was refreshed only occasionally, and researchers who rely on free satellite maps were openly critical of how stale it was. When pressed on it previously, Google said it considers updates as higher-resolution imagery becomes available, without committing to anything specific for Gaza. This refresh changes that, at least for now.
How to compare old and new satellite images of Gaza on Google Earth
I’ve screenshotted one shot from the Rafah region, available in Google Earth. The left is the region in July 2020, the right is June 2024 – still over two years old. The level of visible destruction from Israeli bombardment is horrifying. What stood out to me from a pure chance viewing was the playground that appeared at the centre of the screenshot.
Rafah on Google Earth in 2020
Rafah on Google Earth in 2024
Rafah before and after Israeli bombings
When uploading images like this to the site, it can sometimes be difficult to tell which small thumbnail is which. It was no challenge here, the much more vibrant 2020 image almost shows the hustle and bustle, while 2024 is just destroyed concrete.
You can do this yourself in a couple of minutes, for free, using Google Earth’s historical imagery tool. Open Google Earth in your browser or the Google Earth Pro desktop app, search for a location such as Rafah or Khan Younis, and click the Historical imagery button in the toolbar. In the web version it’s a globe with a circular arrow; in Google Earth Pro it’s a clock icon.
A timeline then appears in the top-right corner. Each larger dot marks a year with imagery available and smaller dots mark extra captures within that year, so you can click back to a pre-war capture and then forward to the latest one. There’s also a Timelapse mode that plays through the captures in sequence. 3D buildings are switched off while historical imagery is on, so what you see is the flat satellite capture for that date.
What the satellite images can and can’t tell you
The images are powerful, but they have limits. Google hasn’t published a capture date for every part of the strip, and Google Earth’s map is stitched together from many images taken at different times, so one neighbourhood can be more up to date than the one beside it. The historical imagery timeline is the most reliable way to check the date on what you’re looking at.
Satellite images also show buildings, not people. They can’t tell you who lived in a flattened block, whether anyone is still beneath it, or what happened on the ground. That’s the gap satellite imagery can never close but with over 72,000 people dead in Gaza at the time of writing, you are seeing the construction of grave yards in this destruction of Gaza. The rubble, their headstones
History isn’t something that just gets written. It’s something that happens and that we all live through and can’t deny. This is further evidence of an active genocide in Palestine.
Lidl Ireland is officially moving into the mobile business. Its Lidl Connect SIM-only service goes live on Monday 5 October, and the first 100,000 customers to sign up will pay €8.99 a month for unlimited 5G data, calls and texts, with that price locked in for life.
The plan also includes 50GB of roaming data across the EU and UK, along with 100 international minutes. Once those first 100,000 places are gone, the same plan costs €12.99 a month. There’s no contract tying you in, so you can cancel whenever you like, and you can either keep your existing number or take a new one.
Back in April, when Lidl first revealed its plans to become a mobile operator, I looked at whether Lidl Mobile would come to Ireland and reckoned it would need to land somewhere around €7.99 to cause a proper stir. €8.99 is close enough to do exactly that. The more interesting part, though, is whose network it runs on, and I’ll get to that shortly.
What do you get with Lidl Connect?
For €8.99 a month, Lidl Connect gives you unlimited calls, texts and 5G data in Ireland, 50GB of roaming data in the EU and UK, and 100 minutes of calls to international numbers. There’s one plan and no tiers to wade through.
The roaming allowance is the standout. Budget SIM-only plans in Ireland have typically capped EU roaming below 20GB, so 50GB is a big jump if you travel regularly or spend time in Northern Ireland and Britain. Lidl hasn’t yet published the fair usage policy sitting behind the word “unlimited”, so heavy hotspot users should read the terms once they go live.
How to sign up for Lidl Connect
You can only sign up through the Lidl Plus app, which is also where you’ll manage the plan afterwards. You’ll need an active Lidl Plus account and a payment card registered in Lidl Pay, as set out in the Lidl Plus terms of use.
From there you have two options. You can pick up a physical SIM in any Lidl store for 99c, or go with an eSIM and do the whole thing from your phone. If you’re keeping your number, you request the port during sign-up, the same as moving between any other Irish networks.
Which network does Lidl Connect use?
Lidl Connect runs on the Eir network. Lidl isn’t building masts. Like GoMo, 48 and Clear Mobile, it’s a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, which means it rents capacity on an existing network and sells it under its own brand. The service is delivered by 1Global, a telecoms company that Lidl’s parent, the Schwarz Group, took a 9.9% stake in earlier this year.
Here’s the bit I find fascinating. GoMo is Eir’s own budget brand, and it charges new customers €14.99 a month for unlimited calls, texts and data on that same network. Lidl is now selling broadly the same thing on Eir’s masts for €6 a month less. It’s a strange position for Eir to be in, with a supermarket undercutting its own discount brand on its own infrastructure, and I’d be surprised if GoMo doesn’t respond.
Practically, it means that if Eir coverage is solid where you live and work, Lidl Connect should be too. If Eir is patchy in your area, a cheap price won’t make up for dropped calls.
How does Lidl Connect compare to GoMo, 48 and Clear Mobile?
At €8.99, Lidl Connect undercuts the standard pricing of every established budget brand in Ireland. GoMo sits at €14.99 for new customers, though it has run limited windows at €12.99 for life this year, while 48 (on Three) and Clear Mobile (on Vodafone) typically land between €12.99 and €14.99. The main operators’ own SIM-only plans can easily run to €25 or €35 a month.
In real terms, moving from GoMo’s standard price to Lidl’s launch offer saves you €72 a year. Coming from a €30 plan with one of the big networks, you’d save just over €250.
Even at €12.99 after the first 100,000 sign-ups, Lidl Connect matches the cheapest standard price among the budget brands and beats them comfortably on roaming.
Supermarket mobile isn’t new here either. Tesco Mobile has been around for years on the Three network. What’s different this time is the price, and the fact that Lidl is tying the whole thing into its loyalty app.
The catch with Lidl Connect
The biggest trade-off is the Lidl Plus requirement. Your phone plan lives inside a supermarket loyalty app, and you need to keep that account active for as long as you’re a customer. Lidl Plus already knows a fair bit about your shopping habits, so if you’ve avoided the app on privacy grounds, this is a hard sell.
“For life” also needs a plain reading. Price-for-life deals in Ireland generally only apply for as long as you stay on the plan you signed up to, so cancelling and rejoining once the first 100,000 places are gone will likely mean paying €12.99.
So should you switch? If you’re paying €20 or more for a SIM-only plan and Eir coverage is decent where you are, this is about the easiest saving you’ll make all year, and fair play to Lidl for coming in at a price that should force the rest of the market to take a hard look at itself. If you’re already on a €12.99 deal with GoMo, 48 or Clear Mobile, the €4 a month saving is smaller, but the bigger roaming allowance could tip it for regular travellers.
Lidl Connect launches on Monday 5 October through the Lidl Plus app, with physical SIMs available in Lidl stores nationwide for 99c.
A Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Lisbon was diverted to Lyon on Saturday evening after a passenger’s power bank caught fire near their seat. Flight LH1170, an Airbus A321 carrying 198 passengers and six crew, landed safely at Lyon Saint Exupéry at around 10pm, and nobody was injured.
Lufthansa confirmed the cabin crew got the burning power bank into a lithium battery containment bag, a fire-resistant pouch designed to isolate a failing battery, before the pilots chose to divert as a precaution. Passengers spent the night in hotels in Lyon and were rebooked onto flights to Lisbon on Sunday. The airline hasn’t said what make the power bank was or whether it was being used at the time.
What is a massive relief here is that the crew did exactly what they’re trained to do and it worked. However, it’s striking that this is the second power bank diversion within the Lufthansa Group in two months, and both happened on airlines that already ban power bank use in the air.
Why divert if the power bank fire was already contained?
Because a contained lithium battery isn’t a finished one. Once a lithium-ion cell overheats, it can keep generating its own heat in a chain reaction known as thermal runaway, which means it can reignite or keep venting smoke well after the flames seem to be out. The containment bag buys the crew time; it doesn’t make the problem disappear.
Continuing on to Lisbon would have meant close to another two hours in the air with a damaged battery on board, while Lyon was minutes away. Getting on the ground quickly was the right call, even if it gave 198 people a night in a hotel they never planned on.
The second Lufthansa Group power bank diversion in two months
In August, SWISS flight LX52 from Zurich to Boston diverted to Dublin in the early hours of 10 August after a passenger’s power bank started smoking in business class over the North Atlantic. SWISS is part of the Lufthansa Group and applies the same ban on using and charging power banks on board, yet reports suggest that power bank was simply sitting in a seat pocket.
Banning use in flight cuts the risk that comes with charging, which puts extra stress on a battery, but it does nothing about a cheap, damaged or ageing power bank that decides to fail in your bag. IndiGo had to evacuate a plane in Chandigarh back in May for the same reason, after a power bank tucked into a seat pocket caught fire shortly after landing.
Can you use a power bank on a Lufthansa flight?
No. Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines have all banned using or charging power banks on board since the middle of January, with an exception for approved medical devices. You can still bring up to two in your cabin bag, but they can’t go in checked luggage or in the overhead locker. The full detail is in Lufthansa Group’s updated power bank regulations.
The overhead locker rule caught me out on an Aer Lingus flight earlier this summer, and it’s the one that makes the most sense after this weekend. Crew can see and reach a battery under the seat in front of you, whereas one smouldering in a closed locker can go unnoticed until the cabin fills with smoke. The rules do vary by airline though, and I’ve already broken down how Ryanair, Aer Lingus and Lufthansa handle power banks on flights if you’re flying out of Dublin soon.
How to fly with a power bank safely
Only bring a power bank you trust, check it before you pack it, and keep it where you can see it. If yours is swollen, dented, gets warm when it isn’t charging anything, or has been dropped more times than you’d like to admit, it belongs in a battery recycling bin rather than your carry-on.
Buy from a reputable brand rather than the cheapest no-name option on a marketplace, since cell quality and proper protection circuitry are what stop a battery failing in the first place. Check the watt-hour rating printed on it too; anything up to 100Wh is fine on most airlines, while 100 to 160Wh needs approval in advance.
If it starts getting hot, smells odd or begins to hiss mid-flight, tell the crew straight away and let them deal with it. They carry the containment bags and they know how to use them, as the passengers on LH1170 found out on Saturday.
Before your next Lufthansa, SWISS or Aer Lingus flight, charge your phone, tablet or handheld fully at home and give it a boost in the airport, because the power bank in your bag is staying switched off until you land.
Ireland, will apparently, still play Israel in Debrecen today, and the build-up has been about almost everything except football. In the space of a few weeks Macklemore, Gavin Bazunu and Brian Kerr have all landed on the right side of history, and it’s easy to get caught up in the social discourse and forget why we’re having these discussions in the first place.
Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine, and somehow the national conversation has ended up on handshakes and captains exchanging small flags before a Nations League match. It’s a wild scenario to be in. The thing that deserves our attention is a documentary called NAZA, in which 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers describe how AI-assisted targeting worked in Gaza and how expected civilian deaths were weighed before airstrikes. It’s in cinemas now and will stream for free on The Guardian’s website from late November.
That’s the story. The match is the distraction, and I’ll explain why below.
A week of handshakes and hypotheticals
The squad voted yesterday to fulfil the fixture after a four-hour meeting. There will be no pre-match handshake and no exchange of pennants, and the players will wear black armbands in recognition of all the lives lost. Honestly, a farsical outcomes where, after UEFA inaction, the FAI didn’t act and now pushes even more pressure on the players Goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu withdrew, saying that as a man of faith and principle it would be wrong for him to take part. Former Ireland manager Brian Kerr said the FAI had lost the respect of the Irish people by going ahead. Macklemore, dropped from Ed Sheeran’s US tour after chanting “Free Palestine”, is bringing a Free Palestine tour to Dublin’s 3Arena on 26 October, with proceeds going to organisations supporting Palestinians.
Each of them chose a side knowing it would cost them something. I’d wager that in years to come we’ll look back and say they were strong leaders doing the right thing.
Then came the press conference. Heimir Hallgrímsson was left alone to field questions from Israeli media, including one about Ireland playing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. To hear that comparison raised at all, let alone by an Israeli journalist, honestly blew my mind.
Why the antisemitism charge doesn’t hold up
I’ll keep this brief, because this piece isn’t about me. Long before I wrote about tech, I learned how to research and write by studying history in college. My undergraduate work focused on Holocaust denial and the undeniable persecution of Europe’s Jewish population during the Second World War, alongside the often forgotten disabled people, gay people, and Roma and Sinti communities who were also targeted by Hitler’s forces.
That history matters to me, which is exactly why hearing Ireland described as antisemitic is off the wall. Jewish people and the Israeli government or IDF are not the same thing, and criticising what’s happening in Gaza is not a denial of what happened in Europe. Treating them as one and the same does a disservice to both.
What is the NAZA documentary about?
NAZA is a documentary built on testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, filmed secretly at night on Tel Aviv rooftops with their identities masked, who describe the systems behind the killing of civilians in Gaza. The title comes from the Hebrew military shorthand for collateral damage, the number of civilians expected to be killed in a strike.
It’s directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors behind the Oscar-winning No Other Land, and builds on Abraham’s reporting for +972 Magazine and Local Call. The Guardian produced it, and Jonathan Glazer is an executive producer. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 10 September, received a standing ovation of around 25 minutes that’s been reported as a festival record, and won the Special Jury Prize.
The Israeli military has denied the film’s main claims with Israel’s culture minister accused the directors of treason and called for their citizenship to be revoked, and Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged a law to strip citizenship from anyone who defames Israeli soldiers. Israel also rejects the genocide charge outright. That said, it’s no longer a fringe position. Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières both say Israel is committing genocide, and a UN commission of inquiry reached the same conclusion last year.
When can you watch NAZA for free?
From late November, on The Guardian’s website, free to anyone in the world with no time limit. Before that, the film is getting a cinema release across 56 countries and territories from 28 September, though not in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza. The filmmakers have offered it to Israeli cinemas free of charge, and The Guardian says it’s looking at other ways to get it seen in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Historians of the Holocaust have spent decades asking what ordinary Germans knew and why they didn’t do more. It’s a question that belongs to every atrocity rather than one nation, and it’s fair to turn it on ourselves. What about the ordinary Irish? From the online discourse this week, most people seem very aware of what’s going on.
That awareness cuts both ways. History will point to films like NAZA as evidence that what was happening was no secret, and that the world still didn’t do enough to stop it. It’s even harder to plead ignorance when that evidence is streaming for free.
Where this leaves us
The match will likely be played, the handshake won’t happen, and the conversation will roll on to the return fixture in Serbia next weekend. All of it is sportswashing and distraction, and it’s working, because it’s taking our eyes off the real atrocities. A new history is being written right now, and the people who will come out of it well are the ones who looked at the evidence and refused to look away. Watch the film.
NAZA is in cinemas now and streams free worldwide on theguardian.com from late November. I implore you to watch it.
