At the time everyone thought 3G was going to be the next big thing.

Hutchison whampoa hadn't expected to be making the billions of losses it has on the 3 networks across the world. I think Three UK is still net loss as an investment?

This is the same company that has made noises for a very long time about wanting to sell out of Three etc.

That'll be because they were bidding for a license the existing networks were not allowed to bid for.

Fully expecting Vodafone to do with 4G as they did with 3G and buy up all the best licences.

The mobile companies have no money to invest in 4G at the moment but they'll be forced to pay for expensive licences even though the market isn't ready for it to make sure they don't get caught on the hop by speculators. The cost will be passed on to customers and there won't be a decent service to justify it. OFCOM was right to hold back on 4G until the market could sustain it but as usual the EU interferes and us proles are going to end up footing the bill while the opportunities that 4G could offer are going to be wasted.

Shame then that Vodafone aren't putting the "best" 3G licences to use by actually providing some coverage. Down here I can be in the middle of a city and be firmly on 2G.

If only "whether the operator is bothered to invest in expanding coverage" was a major factor in issuing a licence. Vodafone and O2 would be relegated.

I seem to recall 3 not being bothered about the UMTS900 decision, saying that it'd "level the playing field" with the new spectrum auctions. Are OFCOM planning to make things fairer by giving more spectrum to the GSM1800 networks and 3?

Hutchison is a fortune 500 company who have invested in telecoms for a long time, what is now Whampoa used to be Hutchison Telecommunications International, former owners of Orange when they invested in 2G technology and when they had the good future is bright branding.

They operate and own ports, hotels, retail you may recognise their UK brands like The perfume shop and Superdrug. They are an energy supply company in many countries including in the US and operate telecoms in 11 countries.

They brought us 2G under the Orange brand, 3G under the Three brand and who knows whether they will bring us 4G under a new brand or existing brand.

They may still be in a net loss overall, but that is always irrelevant as the business is worth billions today, meaning the company is worth a lot of money if it were sold, it's also making profit now and growing customers at a faster rate than almost anybody else in the UK mobile market.

It's a disruptive business i.e it deliberate ruffles the feathers of the likes of O2 and Vodafone, shakes up the industry and forces them to keep their eyes on the ball.

I think they only once said they had plans to exit the UK which was primarily to try and influence Ofcom over some forthcoming decisions at the time. Aside from that most of the rumours about selling out to Vodafone have been generated by the press only due to the similar deal in Aus and with the Hutch network India.

I think for a network to only have been going for 8 years it's doing pretty well, especially when you look at the advantage O2 and Vodafone have had being in the UK for 20+ years.

They've certainly got their act together. Go back a few years and they were a network to be avoided. Now they have by far the best 3G coverage and it isn't a bad network overall. Pretty cheap too.

Their only issue is 2G roaming, although not so much if you live in a city.

I'm very happy with Three, you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's a shame they started operating Three UK like a franchise rather than a spoke in the global wheel, the thing where they used to allow you to use bundled allowances on a Three network abroad would be a great selling point but they seemed to stop it as roaming started to be the normal thing to do.

Yup three are just great - http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/2011/...aled-by-ofcom/

What because they have 0.06 more complaints per 1000 customers than Vodafone?

To be fair there isn't much in it between the networks.

Although people are complaining they are not leaving the network as much as they were Three's churn is
down from 3.2% in 2009 to 2.9% in 2010, meanwhile Vodafone rose from 2.8 percent to 3.4 percent.

More people are churning on the Vodafone network than Three, so it can't be all that bad.

http://blog.three.co.uk/2010/07/19/o...yougov-survey/