Yes, the o2's coverage map is http://www.o2.co.uk/coveragechecker - take a look up and down the motorway network. Or do you mean the channel use and how they are carving up the 900MHz between GSM and UMTS?

EE's network isn't at all one combined network. You still roam between them and they are still each on their own frequency ranges. The aim is indeed to become a single network but it isn't there (in any part) yet. Shame, and I'm sure it'll be good once it's done. There will be a lot of users sharing that spectrum though.

Still awaiting the answer as to which major company has chosen to partner with 3 to offer an MVNO service?

Meanwhile BSkyB is a major digital broadcaster who are at the cuttng edge of subscription TV. They are a major ISP as well and know a thing or two about streaming TV to mobiles and computers with Sky Go.

I'd be astonished armed with the experience they have if they had not considered the technical performance of the mobile network they have contracted with for 10,000 accounts. 02 won the deal, no surprise really as they and Vodafone have contracts with all the major public services.

What major government department or company has 3 persuaded to use it's services?

Waiting.......

It hasn't really been argued that for voice and text that 3 are superior to o2 or vodafone. I would suggest that they are not at all, but for personal use may well be acceptable.

It is a trade off afterall. I use T-Mobile at the moment so have good MBNL 3G coverage with GSM on both T-Mobile and Orange so am rarely without signal. I'd look at moving to Giffgaff but the (o2) 3G coverage is frankly crap, even according to the hopelessly optimistic coverage checker. The 2G coverage is fine though.

Really... have you read this thread lately?

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...5#post54167085

10,000 accounts is nothing mate. My company employ more than 10,000 people and supplies company phones I really don't get why you keep talking about this Sky deal. In the big scheme of it 10,000 is nothing, it's just a corporate company account size, there are 100's of companies that do deals of this size. O2 have always done well in the business market, nobody disputes that.

Yes, I have.
See http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...&postcount=710 and you'd see that is is described as roaming. Each network is still using it's respective mast and each on their respective frequency allocation.

It is indeed roaming not one network yet.

Also as for government agencies being on O2 a lot of them ended up on O2 around the time of the Police being made to go with O2 Airwave as part of a massive contract years ago.. The money they pay them is ridiculously small. I know of a department to do with the Scottish NHS that pays around £8 per connection for the equivalent benefits of a £35 iPhone tariff.
O2 have always had an amazing bussiness team, but it is a small percentage of actual customers..

Real world testing in the areas I travel is O2's coverage has much improved but so have the others. However the network doesn't deal with peak times very well... That is my experience, everyone's is different. As I've said before 900mhz does not provide all that much of an improvement like for like over 2100.

Can a 10,000 account customer be identified on 3?

Can a significant MVNO partner be identified on 3?

If not what is the reason?

If 3 are so good and have such a great product why is it not attracting those kind of customers?

What does this have to do with the thread topic?

I think with Three, they may be good for smaller businesses in cities etc, but for huge companies that need thousands of devices up and down the country, they need the 2G network. That is one of the main reasons.

Orange actually provide mobile services to about half of all police forces in the UK. And it says on their website over 350,000 businesses switched to them last year... So really Sky is nothing major at all!

Rather a lot.

Businesses do a lot of research before committing to a major deal for telecommunication services so perhaps their findings should interest consumers buying similar services.

The MVNO partnership question should also give some indication of confidence.

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/News/13..._business.aspx

Most of those 10,000 people at Sky will only be using Voice services on o2's 2G network and limited data (probably blackberry) on GPRS.

Three has never pitched themselves as a enterprise or corporate service provider. It's business site clearly pitches it at SMB and not enterprise users.

Your last question is phrased incorrectly, because Three is the UKs fastest growing network and has been for several years now according to OFCOM.

As a network with a high number of very heavy users and a limited network capacity, why would it want to attract MVNOs who will use it's capacity and backhaul but take all the customers?

Three's USP is its fast and cheap 3G network. They would be doing themselves a disservice by allowing MVNOs to run on their network.

PS: 10,000 is not even a very big corporate account. My company employs 170,000 people in the UK and easily has 20,000 company mobile phones in use, as well as over 5,000 field based staff with 3G dongles for their laptops. That is a reasonable sized account! (ps: it's with Vodafone not o2 and the 3G coverage sucks!)

Thats not what the press are reporting:

"O2 has won a two-year contract to provide BSkyB’s corporate mobile business. It will supply mobile services for all Sky’s employees, as well as providing managed resilient high bandwidth data links and managed expert services.

The contract is for over 10,000 connections covering a wide range of devices including iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry smartphone devices plus mobile broadband services.

David Plumb, general manager, enterpise, at O2 UK, said: ‘We see Sky as a leader in its field and we were delighted when they selected O2 as their new mobile service partner. Our first job is to deliver a robust mobile communications system for the company, who need to ensure that their workforces, from engineers to foreign correspondents, are able to stay constantly in touch.’

He continued: ‘Our strong levels of network coverage were of highest importance along with our ability to deliver resilient high bandwidth data links for their 2,500 mobile engineering workforce, who carry out thousands of customer visits each day. The above combined with our commitment to provide the highest quality of service will also help Sky achieve commercial, cost and innovation advantage in their business.’"

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/News/13..._business.aspx

I don't mean to interrupt your three-bashing but this page might be of interest to you.

Really was it necessary to repost that whole news article? Think about what sort of tasks field based technical, sales etc... staff will carry out. Then think about a realistic assessment of what they will do with their phones. Usage will look like this:

1. Phone calls (2G)
2. BlackBerry email (2G)
3. SMS (2G)
4. VPN on their Laptop (3G)
5. Occasional web browsing on a mobile device (3G).

I guarantee that enterprise users will not be undertaking any heavy data use. They won't be watching youtube or streaming media on their devices, they wont be downloading the latest apps and music etc...

I wouldn't call 1 industry publication 'the press' they will just be reprinting the press release sent out by the o2 PR department. Do you not read trade publications often?

What has any of this got to do with 3UK being a good consumer network anyway? Which was the original point of the thread (incase you had forgotten)

Very interesting..... 17 MVNO companies that are very small and insignificant.

The big successful MVNO's don't use 3. TalkTalk Mobile, Asda, Tesco, GiffGaff, Amazon, BT Mobile, Lyca Mobile, Vectone and Virgin Mobile all use Vodafone, 02 and EE.

I read the list and have never heard of most of those that are listed as 3's MVNO partners.

You clearly misread the article. It was 32 MVNOs on Three. Thats almost 50% of all the MVNO operators in the UK

3G can carry voice, e-mail and SMS too and in areas where there is coverage it's most likely that is what will be used. 02, EE or Vodafone are a better bet for business or personal communications because they can all offer basic communications on either 2G or 3G.

Simples.....

Ah, it doesn't matter then because you haven't heard of many of them. BSkyB know everything about mobile comms which means that by signing up for 10,000 accounts, o2 is the best operator ever...however JANET who provide network infrastructure to most higher education institutions in the UK sign an MVNO agreement with Three yet they obviously know nothing about these things...

You won't have heard of many of the Three MVNOs because they're SME suppliers and M2M suppliers...

OK, 32 plankton sized companies. Not a haddock let alone a whale on the list!

Wanna qualify the subscriber numbers the 32 have? Less than a single MVNO like Asda I would wager.

It's not the quantity of agreements that count but the quality and market significance of the partner companies that really counts.

3 have nothing of any MVNO significance in the UK.

Depends on the user. If they are data eccentric then 3 may well be the best choice.

I'm on a 3GB FUP with T-Mobile and I'm considering moving. I've researched enough with PAYG SIMS to realise for quick browsing O2 is no good round here.

Ah.... not really MVNO's then in the true sense of the term. More like wholesalers of 3 services.

BTW I work in education and know all about JANET and our establishment uses the network but not their MVNO with 3. We have Vodafone for both mobiles and mobile broadband provision.

All MVNOs are wholesalers. Sorry your argument based around who the large MVNOs are using is silly. I bet those same companies are all running their IT systems using IBM mainframes because they were the only name the directors recognised and would sign off on. Large companies are not the ones you should be looking at as a bellweather of network robustness, they're bogged down by risk-averse managers and legacy agreements signed years ago. Its like looking to Microsoft for the latest tech innovations rather than the Silicon Valley startups.

If you know all about JANET then you'll know they are much better at running networks than sky.

Not sure about that...... Sky seem to have been pretty good at attracting and earning revenues from customers in a competitive market, they have been innovative too and have made a big success selling broadband, phone provison as well as TV services.

Perhaps that is a discussion best left to the broadband forum.

Could you name for me a 'successful' mvno on o2 that telefonica doesn't either fully or part own? Or a 'successful' mvno on vodafone whose average user still has a 2g-only phone? Or a 'successful' mvno on EE that hadn't penned their agreement before Three existed?