I think we can all agree the last couple of years have been a turning point for the operator. I do wonder whether its a case of when rather than if, specifically I refer to 4G, it hasn't been as widely rolled out as many hoped. Many even suggesting its on hold till the outcome of the merger with O2. The network is struggling to cope almost everywhere, is that a legacy of the One Plan?

Then we have the issue of existing one plan customers being forced to migrate to more expensive and restrictive versions of the tariff. I do wonder if its now a reality that Three has to play like the big boys, moving everyone to a higher ARPU. When they first entered the market Three did have a very bad reputation for a number of years, 2G fall back wasn't that great nor did it handover all that well, often resulting in drop calls. I think they turned a corner when MBNL was formed and for a few years were battling with Orange as to who has the widest/largest 3G coverage.

That continued even in partnership with EE until the last few years maybe? They were market leaders by being different, the one plan really did show what could be done, although I guess those efforts were well intentioned, only being used as a home broadband by many customers. I think when it launched it could sustain the heavy usage, yet now its bursting at the seems.

What I find puzzling is that the market has actually favoured Three over the years, they were guarranteed an allocation in the 4G 800 auction and now gifted with 15x2 1800 spectrum from EE. Its not like they don't have enough spectrum to offer good and robust 4G service......it has more combined than O2. Then there was the fall in termination rates to pretty much zero meaning it and everyone else on the market started offering stupid amounts of minutes eventually to unlimited.

Three was gifted those favourable changes as a result of being the smallest operator, OFCOM went out of its way to make sure Three didn't suffer a disadvantage against the other 3.

What I find ironic is Three for so long campaigned for better terms and deals to sustain competition.............yet now it wants to merge with the second largest network in the UK to create a behemoth that would likely make it the single largest player in any domestic EU market.

Is it a case of wanting their cake and having a shit load of seconds, thirds and so on?

Seems about right.

Sounds like another bashing thread to me, nothing that couldn't have been put in any of the other Three threads.

We knew 2 years ago that they ended the One Plan and they have been moving people off for 18 months. A lot of what Aye Up has posted is unfounded "network struggling to cope nearly everywhere" what bollocks, what evidence is there of that? They are pushing twice the data EE is with half the customer base, so those users must be able to use data at a good rate to be able to do that. If the network was 'struggling' it wouldn't be delivering twice what EE is.

Speeds are not the same as EE, but the CEO has said that they aren't chasing speeds, they also want to can the heavy users, but he criticises them for that. He can't have his cake and eat it, which is it? That they should get rid of the heavy users and free up capacity or that they shouldn't move customers off the One Plan?

I'm sure you waging a one man war is going to make all the difference

Eh? I use my phone a fair bit (10GB a month of data give or take) and I don't notice it being a problem. Rather than running speedtests, I'm normally browsing the web, using chat applications and streaming music.

The web browsing is quick, the music doesn't stutter even when driving on the motorway, remind me again how it's struggling; I don't see it?

Agree, that statement was a bit over the top.

But I can see other legitimate complaints in the OP.

But like Thine Wonk said, nothing new, or nothing that couldn't have been posted in an already existing thread.

Plus 1 for all the above comments! And, while I don't really need 4G as 3's data rates are so good on 3G, I am seeing it pop-up more often.

I think the people complaining about Three ending their generous data packages are a bit like the people who complain about the price of soft drinks in pubs. Ok, the actual cost to 3 of you using their network is minimal however the total infrastructure costs of keeping everything going are huge.

I work in the industry (albeit in a back office role) and have seen presentations of the amount of work that is needed to maintain a data network that can operate at peak as well as normal times. The amount of redundancy needed is staggering. It's hardly surprising that Three wants to move away from the deals it offered people pre-4G/smart phones.

Apologies for the sweeping statement, I speak from a personal experience, granted its not everywhere.

I am not complaining about the allowances, its a shit practice what they are doing, its just necessary. I don't think the one plan at £30 a month is all that bad, I just question whether this was a wise move over the longer term for Three. They needed to get into the market and the only way possible was by going in at the cheap end, under cutting rivals. Until around 18 months ago that was still the case.

I do think the forced changes in price plan is going to lose Three a lot of business, I suppose they may recoup the cost from those that stay and move to the more expensive equivalent. I don't feel its a case of Three not offering enough data, I can see a point where the one plan will be phased out. Yet more generous allowances offered at low price points compared to rival networks.

Three has a brand problem especially in the "make it right" campaign, sooner or later that is going to bite the company in the arse. The forced changes could be softened if they introduced a progressive discount fall off. The other thing is 4G and their "super voice", neither have been anything special (give the latter doesn't work properly).

I don't know what the current situation is finance wise for Three UK, but they don't seem to be rolling out 4G fast enough.

If it is a finance issue, would it not be made worse acquiring O2?

O2's network requires enormous amounts of capital to upgrade it, can the cobined entity swallow those costs?

Three compared to the rest of the UK market has a very low cost operating base well below 12%, when the market average is 18%-22%. However it still struggles to increase ARPU significantly, I suspect it will change once the price plan changes complete.

I do wonder if Three realise merging with O2 is going to bring it's own problems with much tighter regulation than Three ever had in the past?

Agreed. Daft thread.

Yes with 10m customers its only point issues. I've got rid of my Three PAYG device now, but at home have seen horrendous speeds (on 3G) due to saturation.

Three still struggles with a lot of reputational issues, such as the lack of indoor coverage, and congested 3G - and these word of mouth topics are hard to fix.

Three will always suffer those issues IMHO. There are parts of Yorkshire and Cheshire where a Three signal is nonexistant.....yet EE has 4G! Even in Malton and Flamingo Land, two very popular areas signal is still weak.

I just wonder if these problems will get worse if the merger goes ahead, Three has a history of heavily investing in it's network until recently, O2 is the arse end of that.

Two wrongs don't make a right do they?

Three have been fantastic for me. Reliable, fast data, whether it's 3G or 4G showing on my phone. I can drive from central Birmingham to North Cornwall or the Fens, and get uninterrupted audio data. All for a trifling sum.

The real problem for Three is they built their business on selling generous allowances at significantly lower prices than the competition. The true price you paid for that was very average service - poor coverage, slow data speeds, and horrendous support outsourced to overseas call centres. But people were willing to put up with all these inconveniences in return for getting service much cheaper than the likes of Vodafone, O2 and EE.

Now Three wants to jack the prices up while the quality service is still very inferior in comparison to the likes of EE. Can't blame them they need to be more profitable. But you can understand why customers who are being hit with some pretty significant price increases aren't happy. The service sure as hell hasn't improved enough to justify the price hikes proposed, so I'd hope any sensible customer will be looking at what options they have with rival operators. If you have to pay more, at least get better service in return for it. And Three can't provide you with that better service right now. Maybe the service will gradually improve when revenues increase, but no guarantees obviously and I wouldn't be waiting around for it.

The merger with O2 just eliminates competition and makes it harder for consumers to go fishing for better deals elsewhere. It's good for Three and their new pricing strategy as less competition means less opportunity to churn customers to rivals as the prices rise closer to parity with rivals. This is why the regulators don't like what is being proposed very much. It's pretty clear what the goal is here even though nobody is going to admit it.

Well looking at this, Orange and T-Mobile were pretty bad before merging, so Three could potentially make it right

I'm perfectly happy with Three too. OP are you on Three or just on the wind-up by saying it's terrible without actually experiencing it as a customer would frequently?

The way you presented the opening post makes me thing the later.

Don't run before you can walk?

I have several accounts with all of the big four, I have stated this on numerous occasions. I base my experience on that, I have been a Three customer since its inception both PAYG and Contract.

The same goes for Vodafone, O2 and EE. Out of them all Three has been the only network I have ever experienced coverage and congestion issues in recent years.

So please get down off your pedestal and pontificating, you really are becoming the wavejock of the Three network.

I would imagine there are others whose experience is completely different and often find themselves languishing on Voda/o2 2G while EE and Three customers have at least 3G. Overall the performance and speeds folks get are so very subjective and location/time sensitive that there really is a great difficulty in finding the "right" answer for "which network?", or in this case objectively concluding whether Three are lamentable across the board compared to the other options, or if it's simply the experience that you've had in the locations you're in.

A use case specific to my own needs is streaming music while on the motorway, for instance. I've looked at the Vodafone coverage checker and see quite a few patches of 2G only on the M6 and M40 (I stopped searching at that point). If I moved to them I'd presumably find them worse by comparison, but it wouldn't be the complete story.

Likewise I've been on Market Street on a busy shopping Saturday and had barely any S throughput on Three, plus I've had indoor coverage difficulties. With all the mobile networks it just does seem to be a trade off between coverage and price, we all make the choice we want to.

Everyone's experience is different. In mine, I find EE and Three to be the best networks for coverage and performance - with O2 and Vodafone being the worst. Especially Vodafone, who installed 3G 900 equipment here but didn't install decent backhaul. You also don't have to travel far to fall back onto 2G.

I won't pretend that 3 are perfect though - they aren't. Their 4G rollout is utter pants and the way they're handling the forced removal of the one plan is poor.

Exactly, but that calls into question what the thread is really about as the removal of the One Plan has an active discussion thread as does the 4G rollout. I'm always suspicious of any thread that starts "I think we can all agree that" and then goes on to make silly claims like struggling to cope everywhere, which the OP has already admitted was a silly claim.

Ending the One Plan is a shame, you could criticize the way that they've done it, but I see why they've ended unlimited tethering. 15% of the userbase have been impacted and now have to pay between £5 & £15 more or choose another plan or network. It would have been better if more notice were given and the tariff people were moved to was based on their usage as others have suggested.

Nobody else does anything near the One Plan and even the new offer exceeds what other networks offer in comparison when it comes to data allowance. Three have always opted to give more data away at the cost of network speeds. They believe that most real consumers don't care about speed as long as the handset streams, downloads, works the way they expect it to. I remember that talk by David Dyson the CEO at conferences joking that the only thing you need really high speeds for was the speedtest app.

Three shifts twice the data of any of the other networks, and in the Yougov surveys Three users were reportedly online for 10 hours more than any other network. A huge amount of Three users are using their data and even at £30 for the One Plan it still remains unique, only it stops the 500GB and 1000GB users using it as a whole internet solution and paying just £15 for it. That should release space capacity for other customers. 95% of customers use the same amount of data as the other 5% at one stage as unlimited tethering was having a big negative impact.

So its not the coverage you're unhappy about, it's the performance. That is fine but grouping the two together is just misleading.

Yes, it's a really weak way of putting forward an argument - assuming every else has your opinion, or trying to foist your opinion on everyone else. It's not dissimilar from the "every right minded person thinks x" approach.

I was with Three until relatively recently - I found data speeds were good, and I had no problem with the customer service (though like many people - regardless of operator - I had little reason to be in contact with them). I recognised when I joined them that there was a degree of compromise with Three in terms of their coverage, but the lower price, AYCE data and Feel At Home roaming were attractive to me.

I have switched away because I wanted better indoor coverage, specifically where I live (and the Home Signal box didn't quite do the trick for me) - and unfortunately only one network can reliably provide that. Maybe when VoLTE is widespread I might have more choice (more likely I'll have moved by then!)... but I'm not holding my breath for that, being of the SIM-only BYOD persuasion!

Three's price plans have of course gone up, but nonetheless I reckon the non-AYCE data offerings of 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 12GB remain attractive when compared to the competition. The one thing that Three still does is have plans with a limited number of minutes - the trend elsewhere is for unlimited minutes and the data allowance being the differentiator between plans. Many regulars on here are heavy data users and light users of talk minutes, however I'd feel constrained with the 200 minute limit that some Three plans have. But as always when making these choices, it's about weighing up what is important to you. (And I'm discovering that being on a 2GB plan with another network is more of a stretch than I thought it'd be!)

As a bove Three are not yet there with the bog boy networks.
With three you expect to pay a lower price, as a result you get less coverage, no 2G fall back, and a completely incomprehensible call centre- when ever i have called them I have struggled to understand what they are saying.
although coverage has improved in recent years there are still noticeable areas of no signal

Three have, in the not so distant past had a very negative image with most people, and the recent shenanigans wont exactly help three improve their image - the purple puppet campaign wont exactly help matters either.

Unfortunate typo