Originally Posted by peter3hg:
“I thought Three was making small profits these days? Obviously these are small fry compared to the amount invested but that money is already gone so it would make no sense to shut it down. They may never see a return on the investment but they definitely won't if they pulled out now.”
“I thought Three was making small profits these days? Obviously these are small fry compared to the amount invested but that money is already gone so it would make no sense to shut it down. They may never see a return on the investment but they definitely won't if they pulled out now.”
There is no question of a shutdown! 3's bandwidth and customer base are of value so HWL can get a return on their investment anytime, the big question is how much and when?
HWL have very deep pockets and have been known to invest further even when they have not performed well in a market. They recently bought and merged a network in Austria to develop their 3 branding there. They might continue to try to develop the UK business but that is costly even for them when the market is mature. Even if they decided to sell the business I'm sure their customers would be protected and their existing 3 terms and conditions would have to be honoured by any new owner for the life of their contracts.
The difficulty for 3 UK is that they have to compete with 3 very large network operators in the UK and there are no smaller or similar sized players in the market to merge with to produce economies of scale needed to become anything close to the size of any of the others. Even at current growth rates it would take many years to acquire the number of customers that would put 3 on an equal footing and HWL whilst known as long term investors have been in the market with 3 now for almost 10 years. Perhaps that timescale will prompt HWL to find some solution to recoup some of their huge investment as 3 UK turns 10 next March.
