I heard a rumour today that Three might be reducing the price of their One Plan SIM-only tariffs in July.
A figure of £15/month was quoted for a tariff with unlimited date and tethering, though it wasn't clear if it would be a 30-day or 12-month commitment.

Curious to see whether this comes to pass.

Rumour from where?

Someone who works for Three.

hmmm. Seems unlikely that Three would drop their £25pm plan by £10. Unless it was a 12 month tie in or a phone contract or something?

I seriously doubt this, especially with the 4G launch coming soon. Unlimited data and tethering at £15pm on 4G is just not going to work for Three.

Maybe they'll drop the price of the 2GB one plan, but even then that's just as unlikely.

Possible as Three likely won't have 4G country wide for a few years and can't compete on perceived speed. At 15 quid a month the One Plan is a real alternative to fixed line broadband in rural areas.

The SIM-only One Plans are priced very high - an extra £10 or so per month gets you a top-of-the-range handset like the S4 and iPhone 5.
I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that Three feel they need to tweak their pricing to make the SIM-only tariffs more competitive.



I don't think that Three's LTE roll-out will be particularly swift given how good their DC-HSPA network is.
And, if anything, Three's stance on LTE gives me more reason to believe this might actually happen - they've shown time and again, for example when they announced they would offer LTE at no premium, that they're willing to make very risky and potentially expensive moves to shake up the market.

A £15 One Plan would be just such a massive gamble that Three have made their own in recent years and one I suspect would pay off.
If you could get all that for £15, that would take a massive bite out of other networks and even budget MVNOs such as GiffGaff.

this may make sense. But it may be on a 12 month contract. They may also want to tweak their PAYG £10 add on as 500MB of data just isn't good these days as with T-Mobile, Virgin & giffgaff you can get at least 1GB of internet on a £10 top up.

Did a bit more digging around, it seems the whole SIM-only range is to be revamped, with tethering included on all 12-month tariffs.

There's also going to be some sort of change with PAYG too, some sort of new flat-rate setup.

Step in the right direction.

But i still don't see them doing unlimited data and tethering on a one plan for £15pm.

I agree £15 might be to cheap but I could see them doing it for £20.

I hope that they do, rural land line broadband is a nightmare, and we barely scrape 1mbs via BT landlines on a rural exchange and even then its not steady and often just loses sync, and we have heard every excuse from BT for it being caused by the distance from the exchange to the fact that the overhead phone lines pass under power pylons!.

We are in a strong DC-HSDPA area for Three which gives around 10mbs to 12mbs speeds, something which I doubt will ever be available in this area from BT, however the £25 a month is a bitter pill to swallow when you see the likes of 12 month landline broadband deals being offered for a few quid a month.

I don't see any reason why they couldn't drop the price, after all they pay out cashback to a percentage of subscribers when they go through certain cashback sites, so I suppose they could afford offer a similar amount in the form of a discount off their tariffs.

In fairness a lot of rural areas still haven't been upgraded but yeah a fair few have and people struggle get 4mb connections from bt so to them it would be a good alternative. As long as you have a DC-HSDPA phone.

This area was on dial up until 2006, as we didn't even get bog standard 512k until early 2006.

4mbs would be a dream, we struggled to get 1mbs, in fact we struggle to stay connected for more than 10 minutes. It took three letters to the CEO office before BT investigated the problem on and off for three years, and came to the conclusion earlier this year that it was caused by interference caused by the phone lines crossing below 11kv power lines, then it was "Sorry there is nowhere else for them to go and so we cannot re-route".

So three months ago, we cancelled the landline broadband because it was unusable, having to reboot the router every 10 - 15 minutes, and only getting 512k to 1mb speeds when it does stay connected loses its novelty after several years.

Fortunately despite BT's prehistoric network having problems, we do have strong coverage from Three, T-Mobile and Orange so at least getting HSDPA / DC-HSDPA data has allowed this area to stream media, something I suppose, towns and cities have been able to do successfully via landline for years!.

A lot of people forget that there are still some places, who are only able to get the same landline speed as they got ten or twelve years ago.

I have always thought they should offer a 'pared down' One Plan with less minutes and texts TBH. I think a 12 month version of The One Plan for £15/mth with less minutes could be a real goer.

So you mean their ultimate 600 which they already do..... (but with tethering).

The figure of £18 was mentioned today.

The impression I got, rightly or wrongly, was that there may be cheaper tariffs with unlimited data and tethering that aren't the One Plan because they don't have the massive pile of minutes.
That could be wishful thinking/a wilful misinterpretation though as something like that would be perfect for me.

Yes! Sort of. But probably not as many minutes.

30 mins of calls, a few hundred texts and 20 - 25gb of Data would be more than enough for me. I only currently use about 5gb to 6gb in a month but even this is considered unthinkable and untenable on the majority of networks. There does seem to be a huge void between the typical 500mb - 2gb packages and unlimited.

Its a shame that Three won't allow you to customise your own tariff . You could have sliders in a similar way as a certain payday loan company, but featuring minutes, texts and data and perhaps a check box option for tethering, with the monthly tariff displayed alongside, which increases / decreases by moving each slider and whether the tethering option is selected.

Probably completely unworkable with the infrastructure currently, but I can dream......

I'm sorry to hear the problems you have I can certainly see LTE becoming the main broadband provider for rural areas by say say 2018 even with EE/Three's 800MHz spectrum they should get 10-20MB which honestly is enough for most things. But from I hearing most areas will get 1800MHz coverage so the speeds are going be more around 20-40MB on Three and on EE around 30-50.

I hope so, but given that Vodaphone & O2 simply haven't been bothered to even introduce 3G coverage within about a 15 mile radius of here, my hopes aren't high for LTE being a viable investment. 2018 is also a long time away and a lot can change between now and then, chances are *IF* it does eventually reach here by then, it will be old technology.

To be fair, i'm happy with the 10mbs to 12mbs which I get from Three, I just resent paying more than some landline customers pay for Fibre packages to get it, along with a stack of minutes and texts which i'll never use.

I understand where you coming from there I use mine mainly as a backup internet source or when I travelling. Though O2 should be definitely in your area on LTE by 2018 as they meant to be giving 98% percent indoor coverage by 2017. I think it will be interesting to see how the networks are in 5 years time as they should of come a long way.

I have the Three 15GB , 24 months mobile broadband and use that because although I am 6 miles from city centre the line speed is crap.. unless you pay out for fibre.
If I do a postcode search on broadband speeds less than 1MB is common for anything below fibre.

Anyway I was only thinking myself that Three are missing a market here. If they could do a 50GB sim with calls and text included for £20 a month, they would scare the hell out of the lower landline broadband suppliers. You would also get the benefit of having mobile broadband too.

The problem is the backhaul would probably not survive if they did something like that.

Hmmm interesting this, I've actually just left 3 today due to the network here being totally over subscribed and 3 basically admitting there is nothing they could do about it.

One of the deals they offered me to try and tempt me to stay was the one plan for £15 a month on a rolling monthly contract as I'm already long out of contract with them.

I know it was a retention deal and I was very tempted but it was the deal they offered me straight away as soon as I asked for my PAC, so perhaps it is about to be dropped in price??

Was it the one with 2GB data limit?