When I contacted Three yesterday I was told my current One Plan was £25 but I had a special customer discount of £10 reducing it to £15. I use around 10-12GB data per month and some months around 900 mins but other not so many.

I was told I would move to the closest current product to my existing One Plan for £28 monthly of £25 12 months or a plan with 200 mins for £15. The only discount I was offered was £8 on a £23 plan (reducing to £15) that includes only 4GB of data (?). I was very polite but was told I could take discounted plan, spend more on a different plan or leave. I'm not impressed so plan to leave even if I end up spending more because I feel very negative about Three.

It's quite common though isn't it? It all goes back to the 'First they came for the xxxx but I didn't say anything...' saying. It's easy to blame those who used more data than you, although Giffgaff users soon found that eventually just about anyone was caught up as the fair use amount kept falling. Likewise, those who defended Ryanair ended up caught out themselves after a while.

I'm disappointed about the change, but not totally surprised and certainly not really upset. Nor can I blame those who use hundreds of GBs per month when Three did allow it, even if it secretly hoped people wouldn't actually do it.

I've said for a long time that the One Plan was too cheap (from a business point of view) and that I'd also like to pay for a decent mobile broadband subscription that could allow me to ditch my slow ADSL line (with no prospect of our cabinet being upgraded for FTTC anytime soon - I've been waiting since 2011 and for some reason our cabinet just won't get done despite all the others having been done for at least two years).

Just by ditching my phone line, the broadband service and some other add-ons, I've straight away got about £35 to play with. FTTC would cost me another £10 or £15 (not sure exactly how much) but let's say a total of around £50. So, can Three or any other network come up with something to entice me?

There will presumably be a lot of people that use tethering today at home or at work that might well sign up if the price is right, giving Three some decent extra revenue. And if Three doesn't wish to mess up, implement TrafficSense or similar from day one.

I am sure EE will press ahead with a nationwide launch of its fixed router and broadband service at some point, and EE will be potentially able to offer 300Mbps!

I am yet to have the text, but thanks to the indispensible financial advie on this thread over the last couple of days, I will know exactly what to do...

If I came out of this with 600 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data, I'll be happy. It's the unlimited data that's crucial to me. Nobody else offers that so I shan't be moving networks. I've only tethered once this year, and that was for about 5 minutes in total, so tethering isn't really important to me - 4GB will be plenty.

An interesting point made a coiple of posts back.

If you accept moving to 3's recommended replacement plan I prusume it is on the basis of a rolling one month contract but if you choose a different plan does that mean commiting for a new 12 month period? Customers changing shoild be careful to check the details as they may be offered a retention deal that might involve a 12 month commitment.

I think it's fair to say that 3 are now looking to increase their revenues and that may be easier to achieve from exisiting subscribers happy to contribute a little more than by acquiring new ones.

Come Jan I will either accept the new plan at what I am paying now, or move on.

No bother either way.

In Austria, Three have unlimited 4G for €65, I would be in favour of paying more, but if Three won't even give me the option...

That is good thinking and I hope others heed the advice regarding calling 3. A discount retention deal moving from the One Plan suggested tariff may have commitment strings attached.

Perhaps 3 UK knows more about how their network runs than you do, and they don't think that anything leading to heavy demand would be sustainable.

They offer unlimited data because they know that it isn't currently a problem for their network. They're taking away unlimited tethering because of the small group of people who were taking the piss and causing congestion.

Does 3 Austria permit unlimited tethering?

Just to chip in my €0.02 here - the One Plan at it's £15 sim-only price-point was never going to be sustainable for 3 to handle in the middle to long term unless ongoing costs in terms of provision were to significantly fall over the following years. While it still may have been at least marginally profitable on a majority of such subscribers who were on such plans more to avoid "bill shock" and went nowhere near the amount of minutes they had or ripped to piss out of data provision, those who abused the facility of the ability to tether on an 'unlimited' basis was likely wiping out the profits on other One Plan subscribers 3 had on quite a significant scale.

Telecom firms like 3, like many businesses can take moderate hits on a small pool of subscribers costing them more than what they are provisioning them with, but if this pool of "net-loss" subscribers hits them so much that one subscriber from this pool uses so many resources that it could wipe out the profits made from several dozen other subscribers to the same plan then it's a no-brainer in the long term. Either you kick off the major-league service abusers (and gain bad press that the likes of Giffgaff have had handed to them, with other subscribers to the One Plan then left in limbo as to where the line now gets drawn), or you kill the service plan for everyone by moving them off it in a personalised fashion. For many who will get a text or letter about this, 3 could limit the damage if they are able to take time to talk to them by looking at their previous usage and tailoring an airtime package that providing the subscriber has had an otherwise good experience of the network and finds the likes of "Feel At Home" very useful (especially outside EU countries) then it should be possible for both parties to be satisfied with a change of terms. For the resource abusers however, it's going to have to be a simple case of sucking it up - the party is over. If such subscribers then try to use masking techniques like VPNs or PDAnet to still use very high amounts of data for tethering purposes, then further action will then be likely in the future - perhaps the end of AYCE unless you are willing to pay high prices for it. A simple case of the few spoiling it for the rest.

Ultimately 3 are now looking to mature their business practices, even with still the lowest subscribers of all the UK MNO's it's reached a point where subscriber numbers aren't everything now, but a profitable base is. They don't have to be number one or even two to be potentially very profitable and be able to put additional resources back into their network. Keeping the majority of subscribers sweet while chucking out the major burdens is a step in this direction.

There is enough public information available to form an accurate opinion, that Three made the decision for financial reasons to be only slightly better than the rest, not due to bandwidth.

BT based landline ISP's managed with the same conditions.

Also there is no evidence (I read all T&C, on page and in the PDF files) of any traffic management or tether restrictions with Three Austria, and their cheapest unlimited plan is actually €20 but is capped at 20Mbps. They even sell 3G routers...

It's a mix of financial reasons and bandwidth reasons.

One of the main reasons is that Three don't want a repeat of June 2013.

for those who don't know, what happened in June 2013?

Someone in their IT dept switched off traffic sense for a week maybe

Its in the first post.

Am currently paying £15 per month for the one plan, called the 0800 number all they would offer me was the standard tariffs on their website (All you can eat everything for £28)

Will unfortunately start looking elsewhere.

Three Executive Office have been quite clear in what they told me, no discounts will be offered.

No reason not to try other networks now as there's no longer anything to lose once the existing One Plan product contact is ceases.

Depends. In my case it's basically 3 or EE (and their MVNOs) as I don't want to go back to the 19th century with Vodafone or O2 and their steam-powered networks.

And EE themselves require you to take out a loan to get a reasonable amount of data.

https://www.quidco.com/ee-mobile-contracts/?asi - been taking a look at this - Looks like you can get £70 cash back on the £27.99 tariff which is 10GB which makes it around £22 a month after cashback.

Would work for me as usually only use around 5/6 GB of data per month.

No, it's just financial, that's how the market works, the most profitable scenario for an internet provider is to be able to offer the advertised speed with the highest contention ratio as they then only need purchase a limited amount of bandwidth, that is what Three have taken a step towards, the only thing that will change Three's behaviour is for demand (heavy users) to go else where (less demand), meaning Three will need to be more favourable (lower price to increase demand).

Also, did you miss the part of my comment in regards to Three Austria (I contacted Three UK support and instead of getting fobbed off they said they'd pass it on)?

I guess your only option is to pay more with either then.

I won't be giving Three the satisfaction. I'm not a massive data user in comparison to some and don't tether much either.

I just wonder how many there will be with a similar viewpoint. Taking something away even if it's not used causes aggravation and I expect a lot of customers with the One Plan will now look elsewhere after being told their price plan is being discontinued. Maybe a change in the terms of the plan to exclude tethering beyond 4GB/month would have been a better option than to force customers into new and possibly more expensive tariff options?

Agree with you. Sitting back and doing nothing just encourages them, its not just about the changes to tethering, there is the price increase to consider also. If you sit back and be complacent about one change, who knows how many more will be in the pipeline, eventually, filled with increased confidence from the quick take up and wide acceptance of earlier changes, the company may just get around to removing or reducing something which you, as a consumer also feel aggrieved about.

Perhaps the better deals are available in other Countries because their consumers have a bit more solidarity are more apt to leave and move on if they don't get a reasonable deal. Over here we just sit back and secretly do the hoping that somebody else will do the protesting and the leaving so that we may reap the benefits of their actions. Nobody actually does though, so those who did the hoping end up settling for less (and usually paying more to get it).

I'm not suggesting that Three continue to offer unlimited data via tethering, but reducing unlimited to 4GB in one knee jerk change as well as quite a substantial price increase to existing customers and removing the loyalty discount, is not, hmmm very loyal!. That stuff works both ways.

If these changes are accepted without too much protest they may feel that the increased prices were accepted by most of their customer base far too readily so maybe they still aren't charging enough and eventually hike the price again - I would!.

I was called weird earlier in this thread for actively seeking a resolution to one plan ceasing despite not having received a text. This is why!!!

After no joy with customer service or in 3 Shop rang the 0800 number and spoke to a very nice man
Said what I had heard about the text and one plan being phased out and I was very concerned.
He said I would have eventually got a text as they were contacting people in phases and everyone out of contract would eventually get a text.
He first looked at my plan and saw I had £10 discount then without any haggling offered me unlimited minutes text & data + the 08 numbers + 4gb tethering etc for the same £15 I'm currently paying and on a rolling basis.
I'm well pleased...I hope that helps others.

I'm not looking so stupid now as it appears not many are now being offered the same deal.The early bird catches the worm eh

To be honest if I hadn't seen others who got this deal I would have been quite willing to pay an extra £5 as I thought I got the one plan at a steal.
Hope many others can get a similar favourable deal

Alex

Alex_1, thanks for the info.... Whats the number to call?