Not got 4G? There's a reason we aren't called 'Four', sniffs Three Ofcom designed its 4G auction so there would be four winners - but the UK's fourth player is in no rush to turn on 4G-LTE. In fact, it thinks 3G connectivity is not all that different from 4G. Three UK says its 4G mobile broadband service will go live later rather than soon. UK CEO David Dyson said today that the upgrade …
Before Christmas I think T-Mobile must have implemented HSDPA+ on their network as I managed to get between 10 and 20mb/s download speeds. Now I never get over about 4mb/s irrespective of location and time of day. I think EE want to make sure there is a clear difference between 3G and 4G in their networks! So I recommend if you can, migrate to 3.
I found Three's retention department quite good, you just need to talk to them like their 4 year olds, as that is usually the level of their English, speak, slowly, and clearly, explain your problem in 3 different ways, and THEN they will understand and help you...
And the great thing is, they WILL make the effort to give you a better deal than is available in the shops or online, I got my deal for £5/month less than it was offered for in the shop, and I got a femto cell sent out too (for when I am in my very shielded house just outside their coverage area...
Three data didn't work well for me. On the train the connection just went for periods of time while GiffGaff worked perfectly and in the station I tried to watch a YouTube video and it was so slow it was totally unwatchable. I called them up to cancel and go back to GiffGaff and it took me more than half an hour to actually get the cancellation through.
We basically kept going around in circles, he said it'd be really, truly unfair of me not to give them a chance to fix the issues I had seen and I kept saying look I'm quite busy as it is, I don't want to try a different phone/contract, I'm happy with the one I have (I was just trying three) and I want to stay with my current provider.
At some point I said to him that there is no way he was going to convince me and he was just making me angry by not letting me cancel, I thought that's got to do the trick. Then he put me on hold, spoke to his manager, and returned for the 20th round of telling me how unfair it'd be of me to just leave without me giving them another chance. It took bloody ages and shouting down the line to get them to cancel my rolling contract.
I suspect if you called in to tell them that you'd like to cancel because you're leaving the country never to return, they'll have a long list of arguments of why you really shouldn't emigrate.
Similar experiences here when I tried to leave. Took a lot of wrangling and hassle, and eventually I told them that I was just going to cancel the direct debit and instruct my bank that I have not authorised a new DD. They then tried to use the "well, we won't give you your PAC code then" type argument and fortunately, I was just using the SIM in my tablet and didn't care about the number so could tell them that. Eventually, after 4 calls, and 2 managers, and around 70 minutes of my time, they agreed to cancel.
And then they didn't... Repeat saga.
Complete pain in the arse. I'll avoid them in the future because of that experience even if I move and their signal is better. I know all mobile phone companies are bad at customer service (though I don't know why) but 3 were worse than the rest, in my experience.
They're good if you want to get a good deal. They are complete nightmare if you actually want to leave. I decided to leave because if their last price rise during my contact (yes, I know they have all done it by now) and have decided to get out of the contract/new phone loop to save money, 40 minutes I spent and they just refused to hand me over my PAC Code. After reading up this was the norm, I decided a new tactic, I decided to come up with a load of lies that even they couldn't argue with. I told them I was the new CEO for Vodafone Northern Ireland and because of that it would be bad for my staff to see me using a Three phone and I get all the latest Vodafone phones for free with no cost to me. Still they wouldn't give up, took another 20 minutes of them, then their manager before I could get my PAC Code. I reckon they were googling my name in the background to see if it was true. I'll never use Three again just because of that experience. As a Network themselves they were fine.
'Three' cannot launch their LTE service yet because they only got 2x5 MHz in the auction, and they got the lowest-frequency block, which will still be occupied by TV services in some parts of the country until the end of July. Their only other licensed spectrum is 2x5 MHz in the 2.1 GHz band (well, and 1x5 MHz intended for time-division duplexing, which has never been used). That spectrum is used for their UMTS (3G) services, and UMTS cells would, I think, have to be turned off to repurpose them for LTE.
There are a fair chunk of phones that do support LTE in 2.1GHz, as this is being used for LTE in both Japan and South Korea. Not all phones aimed at Europe support it, but some do (including the iPhone 5, the Sony Xperia Z and a few others).
Three only got 2x5MHz at 800MHz in the recent auction, but they also recently bought 2x15MHz at 1800Mz from EE, who were required to sell it as a condition of the merger between T-Mobile and Orange. However, Three are not allowed to use any of this until September 2013, which means that they will launch their LTE network a bit late. Come September though and they will have enough spectrum.
The 1.5% is the "average monthly churn rate of total contract registered customer base", according to H-W's books (PDF, page 26).
Make of that what you will.
C.
I'm one of the three new customers last year
And the reason
Unlimited data on the contract... thats it
Very handy when you're tucked up in a hospital bed on a saturday night and you got nothing to do but watch u-tube vids because hospital has got butt fugly agency nurses in instead of the spiffing regular staff
Here's the plan, wot i have thunk about for a long time.
I have noticed a pattern in the mobile industry.
First it waz, the anal log
then it all become all digital
remarkablitatty it morphed in 3G init
Then 4G
In the spirit of rounded corners I suggest a whip round to copyright 5G
OR vaguely mention in a US patent its a bit better than 4G and retire to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's forest retreat.
None of the rest of the article made any sense.
I agree with the ridiculousness of EE's pricing. Their cheapest sim-only contract is £21pm, and that;s with just 500mb data allowance. I pay £15pm with 3 for unlimited data. Even if my phone was 4G capable, there's no way I'd be moving to EE.
As a new Three user (from Orange after those in contract price increases and then a 30% hike in the price of Orange care) I am really pleased with the Nokia Lumia 920 and the speed of the network. Got myself on a 'all the data you can eat' plan too. Now I don't worry about watching Netflix. The downloads speed I get are all in excess of 10Mb/s so I am not in a rush for the 4G, especially given that after my home broadband went from 10Mb/s to 20Mb/s I never noticed it except when downloading from MSDN. Joys. Yes really pleased so far with Three and the Nokia Lumia 920 is a great phone.
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