Glo 3GB for ₦500 Weekend Data Plan: How it works and how to subscribe

A member of the Mobility Nigeria team was chilling one Saturday morning, when he received a promotional SMS from Glo. The SMS offered him the Glo 3GB for 500 naira Weekend Data Plan, valid for use on Saturday and Sunday.

The idea of a weekend data plan is that the subscriber gets extra value for their money. If not, a regular data plan would do. Nigeria’s 3rd mobile network, Globacom (also known as Glo) has a package that attempts to meet the needs of subscribers during the weekend. The Glo 3GB for 500 naira data plan is self-explanatory, It offers 3GB of data for a token amount of N500.

3GB for 500 naira is a lot of value when you look at the current data tariffs across board in Nigeria. The data plan is also called Glo Weekend500 plan. Glo says that the validity for the plan runs through Saturday and Sunday. This being a juicy offer, we jumped at it and spent ₦500 to test it out.

While this Weekend500 plan is on offer for Saturday and Sunday, it appears to have a 48-hour validity, so that if you subscribe at 10am on Saturday, it expires at 10am on Monday. Chances are that you will not be able to activate it outside of saturday and Sunday though.

How to subscribe to Glo 3GB for 500 naira Weekend Data Plan

To activate the Weekend500 plan, dial *777# and proceed through the menu to select Weekend Plan, or visit hsi.glo.com.

Once subscribed, you will receive a confirmation text message from Glo, that reads:

You have received 3072 MB for Weekend500. Remaining volume is 3072 MB. You can SHARE or GIFT data by dialing *777#

How long does Glo weekend plan last?

48 hours. After receiving the confirmation text message, you will also receive an activation text message from Glo stating when your Glo 3GB for 500 naira Weekend plan will expire. Here is an example from a subscription that was done at 10.46am on Saturday 20th of June:

CONGRATS ! Your Weekend500 plan has been activated! It will expire on 22/06/2020 10:46.

As you can see from the SMS, the Glo 3GB for 500 naira Weekend Plan expires at 10.46am on Monday, meaning it has a validity of 48 hours. We are a bit curious about what happens if you subscribe on a Sunday morning: does validity run for 48 hours and give you acces to the 3GB till Tuesday? There is only one way to find out, and we will update this page as soon as we have.

Update 1: So, on Sunday morning, we subscribed for the 3GB for 500 naira plan to see when the expiry would fall. The activation SMS sent by Glo stated that expiry was on Tuesday morning, so the 48-hour validity is good even if you subscribe to the plan on a Sunday. That means you can use it Saturday to Tuesday.

Update 2: At 12.01am on Monday morning, the Weekend500 plan simply stopped working. So, regardless of what your validity is, this plan works only during the weekend. We had about 600MB of data left on it. Will it be carried over to the next weekend? We shall find out.

Is 4G Available On The Glo 3GB for 500 Naira Weekend500 Plan?

Yes; the Weekend500 plan works on Glo 4G, where available. If you do not have a 4G phone or coverage, you will get access to 3G, EDGE, and GPRS, in that order. We got 4G LTE service on our device and we have been able to browse without issues.

We ran two speed tests while on the plan to see what kind of performance we were getting in actual figures. We got the following results.

First Speed Test:

• Download: 1.5 Mbps
• Upload: 1.2 Mbps
• Ping: 42 ms

Second Speed Test:

• Download: 3.1 Mbps
• Upload: 1.2 Mbps
• Ping: 60 ms

These results while using the Glo 3GB for 500 naira Weekend500 plan are not stellar. By 4G broadband standards, it is poor. But Glo 4G isn’t known for blazing performance in general. However, while not super-fast, the speeds we got are very usable. Note that real life speeds depend on a number of factors, including network capcity and congestion at your location, as well as your smartphone or mifi.

Can You Share The Glo 3GB for 500 Naira data plan?

We checked via hsi.glo.com and vis USSD: in neither case were we able to share the data from this plan to another Glo line. It does not seem likeyou can share the Weekend500 plan’s data.

Can You RollOver Data From The Glo 3GB for 500 naira plan?

We serious doubt that you can. It is a special data plan limited to Saturday and Sunday only, so it is best to expect that any unused data  at expiry is gone forver. We will confirm as soon as we have used up our first subscription of the plan.

The Glo 3GB for 500 naira Weekend data plan like this is great for you if you have lots of work to do, or movies to watch, during the weekend. Of if you need copious amounts of data at a low cost.

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Author: Mister Mobility

Master storyteller and founder of Mobility Nigeria, Mister Mobility, has used and reviewed hundreds of mobile phones since 2001.