Mobile Network Comparison

Three Mobile has announced that it is finally starting its 4G rollout across the UK. The super high speed signal will initially be available only in London but Birmingham, Manchester and Reading will follow shortly.

The inappropriately-named network has said that the initial stages of the roll-out will be relatively slow with only a few thousand customers able to make use of 4G speeds to start with. Three is the last of the major networks to finalise its 4G plans and will be desperately trying to catch up to its rivals to get a usable 4G signal to the majority of the UK population.

A Three spokesperson said “We have begun to roll out 4G as promised but we are starting slowly as to ensure good customer service. This is a big change so we want to get it right. It’s all part of the evolution of the network.”

It’s now a year after EE first started providing its 4G service and Three has only just begun to turn on its antennae. But, in an attempt to make up for the delay, Three has the most promising deal available from any of the networks. Unlike their competitors EE, Vodafone and O₂, customers will not have to pay any extra to benefit from the higher data speeds. Nor will they have to sign up to get locked into new lengthy contracts. And for this, we can only applaud them.

In addition to London, Birmingham, Manchester and Reading, Three has announced that their 4G rollout will pick up the pace in January next year. They have also previously revealed the other regions that will be next to get 4G during 2014. They are Aberdeen, Blackpool, Bolton, Bournemouth, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge,Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Gloucester,Huddersfield, Ipswich, Kingston Upon Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Milton Keynes, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford,Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Preston, Sheffield, Slough, Southampton,Southend On Sea, Stoke On Trent, Stockport, Swindon, Watford and York.

We’re also happy to see that Three have cemented their reputation as the most forward-thinking and internet-friendly network. Unlike all their competitors, they will be the only UK network offering truly unlimited data on their 4G plans. This means having super fast internet on your phone is transformed from being nice-to-have to truly-useful.

Even better, Three has also announced another useful benefit to their customers – completely free roaming in the US. While other networks are happy to cash-in on their customers’ trips and holidays, Three are making the most of their global connections to make life simpler for people rather than try to put their customers through the mangle to squeeze every penny out of them.

Are you a Three customer? Are you looking forward to getting 4G access? Or do you current use 4G on another network? What do you think of Three’s choice to offer it at no extra charge and make unlimited data deals available? Let us know!

On Monday, Giffgaff paid out a total of £2.4 million to all their members as a payback bonus. Over the last few years, that makes the total earned over £8 million and the amount only seems to be increasing year-on-year. It’s all part of their founding philosophy of mutual giving that is reflected in their very name and rewards everyone who helps the network grow by posting in the forums and recommending their plans to friends.

If you want to join Giffgaff to get involved in the payback scheme and earn your share of the next multi-million pound payout, simply join through the link above. This way you’ll start off with £5 free credit at no extra cost to yourself.

Giffgaff aims to involve their customers as much as possible in running aspects of the network such as customer service and help as well as generating new leads. Because this is done in a social crowdsourced way, they can save huge amounts of money compared to traditional marketing techniques and thus offer far better prices than the competition. There’s even a hefty chunk left over to return to everyone who plays a role in the running of the virtual network.

Payback is processed every six months in June and December and, as Giffgaff has grown as a network, the amount of people helping out has grown massively as has the amount of money paid back to the community. We’ve been carefully charting Giffgaff’s payback since the first payments went out back in June 2010.

Members can choose to either receive their payback earnings as airtime credit to spend on calls, texts, internet or bundles goodybags. Alternatively they can donate it to a charity of the community’s choice or get it as cold hard cash. Some people do very well from this – over the last six months, one member even somehow earned a massive total of £17,000!

We’re especially happy to see that Giffgaff include charity as part of their mutual giving philosophy. Last payback the network’s members donated a massive £12,150 and Giffgaff doubled that making the total £24,300. We’re sure you agree that it’s fantastic that charities can be benefiting from these amounts of money.

This June Giffgaff paid out almost £2 million and the time before that their total was £1.85 million. So the trend is steadily increasing and seems to be pretty sustainable. We wouldn’t be surprised if the next payback period got close to a total of £3 million paid out.

The charities chosen this time round are the very worthy Disasters Emergency Committee and The Alzheimer’s Society. The userbase excelled themselves this time round and, once the donations were matched by the generous people at Giffgaff, the total given to charity was an amazing £58,000.

We put together the graph at the top of the page to chart the history of Giffgaff’s payback payments so far. What do you think will happen to the trend in the future? Are you involved in Giffgaff’s payback scheme? And how much do you predict they will give away new June?

Fast-growing mobile phone operator Three Mobile is now arguing in favour of consolidation of Britain’s main mobile networks. In a statement David Dyson – the CEO of the network – suggested that the number of operators could fall from four to three.

This marks quite a rapid turnaround as previously, Three have been adamant that consolidation should not happen in the UK market. They are the smallest of the main mobile networks with only 10% of the market from their 8 million customers but rapidly growing and have hefty financial backing from Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

The most obvious benefit from reducing the number of operators running mobile networks in Britain is that it would drastically cut down the amount of superfluous infrastructure required to cover the UK population. With fewer mobile networks having to provide expensive cell towers and data backbones, unnecessary redundancy can be reduced. It would also mean that each of the remaining networks would have a greater market share and therefore greater revenues to invest in improving their networks.

Despite this, in 2010 Three strongly oppose the merger of the Orange and T-Mobile networks to form the first 4G super network, Everything Everywhere (later to be renamed EE). This produced a massive new entity with a dominating amount of market share and Three were understandably against it.

This was likely because Three has always been the new upstart in the UK market and, indeed, they had to apply for special protection from the regulator Ofcom in order to ensure that it was not outbid by its bigger rivals in the recent 4G spectrum auction.

All mobile network operators are struggling with reduced revenues in light of the general shift to internet protocol-based communication rather than standard voice calls and text messages. Traditionally, SMS was especially lucrative for mobile networks as they made unfathomable profit margins on each text sent. However, nowadays platform such as WhatsApp, Google Hangouts and Facebook are largely usurping text messages on people’s mobile phones.

Three is now arguing that 2014 will be the year of consolidation across the European markets. And they are backed up by research analysts’ reports that there will soon be a wave of mega-mergers of various mobile phone networks in Europe. In fact, a very strong prediction is that Three would acquire O₂. Just how much weight we should put on this prediction is another matter entirely as the director of the main insight firm suggesting this will happen has a less-than-stellar track record in his predictions.

O₂ is thought to be up for grabs because its parent company has racked up a huge amount of debt which it desperately needs to take a chunk out of. it is drowning in owing of about €50 billion(!) so selling its UK network to Three would be very helpful in achieving this goal. We would also be happy with this deal as it would entrench its position and make it one of the biggest operators in Europe as it already has a strong presence in Austria and several other countries.

With this knowledge, it is only right to be sceptical of Three’s about turn. Hutchison Whampoa has already bought out out O₂ in Ireland and is looking to merge the networks. And it would ostensibly appear that their rapid change of tack merely has been inspired by self-interest.

Indeed, it is easy to argue that a reduction of the number of mobile networks in the UK and have a vast the negative effects on the markets. By edging closer to a monopoly and by putting more power into the remaining mobile networks, customers would surely suffer. It’s hard to see how reducing the competition would do anything but make the worst deals for consumers an easy way the new mega-networks to force through price rises. Having said that, it would also mean that we’d see fewer adverts like this in the future.

What you think of this news? Do you think it’s a good idea for Three Mobile to buy out O₂? Do you trust David Dyson’s reasoning why your little bit sceptical? And how lucky you think this is can happen in 2014?