Three 4G Rollout
FortKnox
Posts: 127
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Seeing as o2 have announced there 4G for the 29th August and Vodafone possibly being around the 21st September. Three is the only one left to make any sort of announcement.
I decided to stop into two of the Three shops in my area today and asked them for any updates on the 4G roll out.
The gentleman in Swansea told me he had not been told anything. However after speaking to someone who seemed to be in the know in Neath he stated that Three would start rolling 4G out sometime in September, although it was originally November time he said that the time table had been moved forward due to the recent announcements made by o2/Vodafone and that the primary focus for 4G would be on the 800mhz band not the 1800mhz.
Now I have no idea if this is the truth because I can't seem to get a second opinion from Three's Twitter feed. All they keep doing is saying is "4G will start rolling out later this year. If you've got a 4G ready device there will be no extra cost <Dan" to every customer asking. Copy and Paste function.
UPDATE: After further discussion on Twitter I finally got this response "I'm afraid I don't know the exact time but it will be within quarter four this year <Dan"
Perhaps other people could check in with there stores and see what information they provide and see if there are any consistencies in the information provided?
I decided to stop into two of the Three shops in my area today and asked them for any updates on the 4G roll out.
The gentleman in Swansea told me he had not been told anything. However after speaking to someone who seemed to be in the know in Neath he stated that Three would start rolling 4G out sometime in September, although it was originally November time he said that the time table had been moved forward due to the recent announcements made by o2/Vodafone and that the primary focus for 4G would be on the 800mhz band not the 1800mhz.
Now I have no idea if this is the truth because I can't seem to get a second opinion from Three's Twitter feed. All they keep doing is saying is "4G will start rolling out later this year. If you've got a 4G ready device there will be no extra cost <Dan" to every customer asking. Copy and Paste function.
UPDATE: After further discussion on Twitter I finally got this response "I'm afraid I don't know the exact time but it will be within quarter four this year <Dan"
Perhaps other people could check in with there stores and see what information they provide and see if there are any consistencies in the information provided?
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800 would require new antennas in addition to the ones they already have as part of MBNL. Even EE is only just starting to look at the 800 roll out (usually means half a year or more till it actually happens.)
Three will not launch near to Vodafone's date.
Three are much concerned at moment about bringing DC-HSDPA to there entire network or as much as they can. They aren't considering LTE to be important or more of a game changer and to degree they are right initially it is going to mainly increased coverage.
I've also been told Three are going to launch new roaming plans and they'll be launching a app similar to O2's TU GO which allows you to make/receive calls/texts over wi-fi. This is going to happen around September ish.
Also there is some new BS marketing campaign happening soon apparently.
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showpost.php?p=66768811&postcount=29
Nice to hear about voice over wifi. Figured it was going be november though. Nice to see that they have managed to upgraded vast majority of there masts now though.
Take what i've posted with a grain of salt though. It could all change. Might have already have changed. But that's what i've been told by people "in the know".
Any info on this new roaming plan you mentioned
Remember "3 like home"
that. but better (apparently it's in a trial stage)
Don't ask me about pricing or add on/tariff details. I have no idea.
So a service thats added onto a plan and not a whole new plan as such?
Would love to have EU roaming including data on The One Plan!
At the moment they just do Huawei 3G dongles.
So to sum up
I don't know. It's still in trial stages apparently but will be announced soon.
If i know any more i'll post about it.
Vodafone i've not heard much from about it lately.. but they freely sell Femtos so no big rush but they are doing app development like Three/EE and one of the MVNO's!
I suppose. I wasn't to sure myself. Seemed to good to be true. But thought I would put the question out there to see what experiences other people have had.
No idea of there'll be any update to wider roaming though.
This is what i heard too.. but hey i'm pretty sure i've be wrong before.
It's pretty obvious why Three would focus on 800MHz: coverage. Lower frequencies have far better propagation characteristics than higher frequency ones. That's both geographical coverage improving but also (somewhat more importantly) building penetration will improve. That will mean being able to get some data where you can't right now and eventually voice too when they roll out VoLTE.
You're right that 800 won't bring the faster speeds, 1800 will be used in congested areas to improve performance (hopefully there are corresponding improvements to backhaul capacity).
They originally were aiming for 10m customers by the end of 2013. Now they're aiming for that number by the end of 2014.... hmmm...
Interesting I can see them making at latest by june next year.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c02fc2bc-fac0-11e2-87b9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2aqbYlsMw
Guardian -
Oh well, at least mine was free.
Won't Three have to rename themselves Four and the Five later on?