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UK mobile network Three has really been hit by the smartphone boom, revealing that a staggering 97 per cent of all the traffic through its mobile network is now internet data alone.
And it’s been a very recent traffic explosion, too, with Three recording a massive 427 per cent rise in mobile web use in the 14 months from June 2010 to September 2011. That’ll be all the new Android users out there messing about with Google maps and not turning Gmail sync off.
But then Three only has itself to blame — it’s been offering its “All You Can Eat” unlimited mobile data plan for quite some time, which has seen it win over many of the more data-hungry smartphone users. [Three]
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Sounds like the reality is people only really want a dumb pipe these days. Have to say I’ve been impressed with 3′s data network having switched to them about 3 months ago. Pretty much solid, and considering all I want in a smartphone is data, it does the job well.
While I can’t really fault 3′s network (especially data) I do sometimes have outages where I can’t connect to the network for hours at a time. I’ve noticed a few other people (on Twitter) have this issue with 3 too. Despite complaining to their customer services, they haven’t been able to suggest a fix — they keep blaming my handset! I doubt that’s the issue though, when I’m forever changing my phone.
Actually Kat this has happened to me. I have found the best solution is to activate airplane mode for 15 seconds or so. It then kinda forces it to reconnect to the network and it works right away. Works for me anyway.
Thanks for the tip — I’ll try that next. Though ideally I’d rather not be in that situation again, given the choice…
Hi Kat, remember to turn your phone off, at least once a day and clear your cache, this can affect your phones performance dramatically.
Would be interesting to see the stats for other networks too, I would guess T-Mobile has a pretty high percentage as they’ve had decent android data plans for a while (which is why I’ve been with them for the last 18 months and have just signed up for another 24 – hooray for unlimited data @ £25/month!)
I think O2 would be fairly high as well simply because a lot of the early iPhone adopters are still on the network (I’m judging this by the fact that the O2 shop in Poole had a queue stretching 100M out the door on 4S launch day where as all the other shops has a couple of people in them)
Any other thoughts?
Not so sure about O2. Their 3G is pretty poor that it might persuade people to do heavy data activities over wi-fi.
I would love to use my All You Can Eat data, if only 3 would return my phone from their bloody repair centre without trying to extract even more cash out of me.
They may have a mainly data network but their customer service should have been outsourced to monkeys, instead of Mumbia. At least monkeys get stuff done.
I was with O2 for 10 years. I left and went to Three for the iPhone 4S in protest at the disgraceful removal of ALL included data on O2. In fact my calculations show that to get a tariff that matched iPhone3GS on O2 now would cost about £80 per month.
Im on Three mobiles The One plan and I LOVE IT! The signal is actually better than O2 ( i travel all over ) for data and calls dropping i would say is twice as bad as O2. It a fair trade for unlimited data!!!!
Tbh data connections are more important than text and minutes now by far.
Three’s network is good, but if you have a problem just give up. They shut off a mast in my area meaning I couldn’t get any signal, and I had to spend 15 hours on the phone to let me cancel the contract.
Also when I went to the Putney store, near the train station to get a new SIM Card I phoned them up before and they said they had loads of ones. When I got there I got told
‘Sorry we don’t have any C20 SIM Cards. Why didn’t you mention that?’
So next week I phoned up again and asked if they had any C20 SIM Cards and again they said they had stock, but when I got there the same person that told me I had a C20 SIM Card the week before said that C20s don’t exist, just 1, 2, 3, 4s, and that the person must’ve been lying. When I told him that it was him he denied he’d spoken to me.
When I phoned up CS in India they were actually very good and helpful, and the person said there was no way for me to know what number my SIM Card was, it’s just a random allocation to which server it was.
To top that all off it took about 5 minutes to be served at the stop because the person told me to wait while they were playing on their phone. And no they weren’t doing anything important, I saw the screen, it was a game.
Finally they also halved my data allowance without telling me and said that I was a liar and it was always like that, even they changed it after about 3 months on the contract.
All in all, I think you can see why I’m not happy with Three!