Latecomers?
Surely they were the first 3G providers in the UK? Besides, Hutchison, of which 3 is a brand, has been around for years, having established both Orange and the doomed Rabbit.
3UK, the 3G provider much derided for coming late to the UK mobile party, can now count itself among the grown-ups as it agrees to provide network infrastructure to a new MVNO from Gamma Telecom. Gamma Telecom already provides telephony services to small and medium sized companies around the UK, and the new MVNO will be …
I hope there is a roaming agreement and that their network is better than the Irish one.
Tesco is using O2 in Ireland for 089, which makes some sense, you can get EDGE from the GSM if no 3G/HSDPA. Or GSM calls of 3G mast full.
3G only building penetration is worse at 2100Mhz cf 900MHz of many O2 GSM Masts though some GSM/EDGE is 1800.
EDGE is 220K+
3 in Ireland is "up to" 3.6MBps but can be as low as 70k. If a cell is bunged up with data you may not get a voice call.
The other operators with GSM and 3G have more flexibility, though Vodaphone for data on GSM is limited to GPRS 50k ish rather than O2s 220k ish EDGE.
Actually its the other way round. 3 use to use O2, but have now switched to Orange.
Given 3s lack of presence in the SME market, and that Gamma are well known for creating systems which are easy to use by resellers, this is a very smart move by 3. As other networks refuse to allow access to resellers I can see 3 cleaning up via Gamma.