Want 5G? Pay no more! Three UK announces 5G Prices

[yolosnail]

Three UK has just announced prices for their new 5G network,  and that announcement is that there are no changes. 5G will come as standard on every plan.

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Three has announced its 5G pricing in the UK, and the good news is it won't cost you any more than its current "contract, SIM only and PAYG 4G mobile plans.

 

So this means that customers will be able to get unlimited 5G data for as little as £22 per month

 

As a Three customer, this is no surprise as they did the same with the launch of 4G, when EE launched their 4G network there was a significant price increase for the faster speeds.

With the 5G launch, this is no different. EE has increased their prices for 4G, and while Vodafone has reasonable prices and unlimited data, they have speed caps on their plans, so you pay more for faster speeds.

 

The downside is Three's 5G network hasn't been rolled out yet, and my area isn't on the launch list, but the smaller cities an towns around me are!

 

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We know it will starting rolling out the service for mobile broadband in August, but the closet 5G release date we've had so far for smartphones is "later this year."

 

Source:

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/threes-5g-network-wont-cost-you-any-more-than-4g

http://www.three.co.uk/5g

[James300]

I'm very much looking forward to Three's 5G rolling out in my area (I'm in the Southeast so I imagine it'll be pretty quick) and picking up a 5G handset when my contract is up.

 

A slight aside: Is their home broadband any good? I understand they use a router to connect to their mobile network, but was wondering how much latency and instability it introduces. If their 5G home broadband is cheap, it sounds like a no-brainer

[porina]

Been on Three PAYG for a long time. The 4G was pretty bad coverage early on but is now not bad. Guess we'll see that cycle again with 5G. Fortunately I don't see any massive rush to get it, so probably wont even be a consideration for me for a couple of years before I look at replacing my phone to something that might support it.

[porina]

1 minute ago, James300 said:

A slight aside: Is their home broadband any good? I understand they use a router to connect to their mobile network, but was wondering how much latency and instability it introduces. If their 5G home broadband is cheap, it sounds like a no-brainer

I have a 3GB/month broadband package with them, accessed via dongle. I've used it as backup/travel. Even used it for gaming before when my regular cable connection was down, but there were lag spikes so I wouldn't want to do realtime online games with it regularly.

[yolosnail]

4 minutes ago, James300 said:

Is their home broadband any good? I understand they use a router to connect to their mobile network, but was wondering how much latency and instability it introduces. If their 5G home broadband is cheap, it sounds like a no-brainer

I tether from my mobile a lot when I'm working on the go, and in my area at least Three's network is amazing. I usually get at least 40mbps down and about 25mbps up wherever I go, and the latency hasn't been too bad, but it's still 4G so it'll never be as good as a physical connection. 

4 minutes ago, porina said:

The 4G was pretty bad coverage early on but is now not bad

Three has always had really good coverage where I am, in fact it was the only network that I could get signal on at our caravan up in Kielder. I used to get full 4G signal whereas on EE and Vodafone I would struggle to get 3G.

[TechyBen]

8 minutes ago, James300 said:

I'm very much looking forward to Three's 5G rolling out in my area (I'm in the Southeast so I imagine it'll be pretty quick) and picking up a 5G handset when my contract is up.

 

A slight aside: Is their home broadband any good? I understand they use a router to connect to their mobile network, but was wondering how much latency and instability it introduces. If their 5G home broadband is cheap, it sounds like a no-brainer

Why?

 

Honest question. Other than the number changing from a 4 on the handset to a 5... why?

[yolosnail]

Just now, TechyBen said:

Why?

 

Honest question. Other than the number changing from a 4 on the handset to a 5... why?

The main improvement is latency, 4G is plenty fast enough for most uses, but the latency isn't the best. 

I think why Three has upgraded it's whole core network for 5G is because they're rolling out 5G home broadband before 5G for phones

[spartaman64]

i wonder if sprint trashed their 4G network in chicago for 5G because before when i go to chicago i get 4G LTE everywhere and now i get 3G in most places

[jiyeon]

I've been an EE customer for 70% of my time holding a mobile phone, and 20% of that was spent with Three. I live in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland and Three's coverage was always garbage indoors and I left them to go back to EE after less than 3 months.

 

Three do offer exceptionally nice data plans for decent prices, but their coverage - at least where I live - is still something they have to address, as well as their speeds.

Props to Three for offering 5G at no extra cost, as far as I'm aware, 5G plans over on EE will be quite pricey over 4G ones.

[James300]

52 minutes ago, seoz said:

I've been an EE customer for 70% of my time holding a mobile phone, and 20% of that was spent with Three. I live in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland and Three's coverage was always garbage indoors and I left them to go back to EE after less than 3 months.

 

Three do offer exceptionally nice data plans for decent prices, but their coverage - at least where I live - is still something they have to address, as well as their speeds.

Props to Three for offering 5G at no extra cost, as far as I'm aware, 5G plans over on EE will be quite pricey over 4G ones.

Three's coverage tends to be very, very good or very, very poor.

 

I remember them being abysmal when they first came onto the scene, and only gave them a second chance last year when I grabbed a sim for their free US roaming. They're great where I live, at my office and in London, but there are some dead areas on my drive into work.

 

Three seem to have an awful lot of the 5G spectrum tied up so hopefully coverage will improve at least comparatively once rolled out

[yolosnail]

52 minutes ago, seoz said:

I've been an EE customer for 70% of my time holding a mobile phone, and 20% of that was spent with Three. I live in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland and Three's coverage was always garbage indoors and I left them to go back to EE after less than 3 months.

 

Three do offer exceptionally nice data plans for decent prices, but their coverage - at least where I live - is still something they have to address, as well as their speeds.

Props to Three for offering 5G at no extra cost, as far as I'm aware, 5G plans over on EE will be quite pricey over 4G ones.

Down in Newcastle we have great coverage on Three, but as with all networks, it depends on your area. There's no denying EE's network is good, in fact when I was with EE, I don't think I ever lost signal except from in Kielder. Their 4G network is pretty quick too, I remember being really surprised when I was just doing a speed test and was getting over 100mbps down, I just think their network is way too overpriced 

[yolosnail]

1 minute ago, James300 said:

I grabbed a sim for their free US roaming

Yeah, I have a friend who works abroad, so she has a Three PAYG plan, so when they decide she's used it abroad too much, she just gets a new sim, but they seem to have been relaxing the amount of time you can use it abroad now, she was out of the country for 4 months and they didn't stop her roaming this time

[jiyeon]

1 minute ago, James300 said:

I remember them being abysmal when they first came onto the scene, and only gave them a second chance last year when I grabbed a sim for their free US roaming. They're great where I live, at my office and in London, but there are some dead areas on my drive into work.

 

Three seem to have an awful lot of the 5G spectrum tied up so hopefully coverage will improve at least comparatively once rolled out

Absolutely, it's a dice roll for if you'll get good coverage or not on Three, which is ultimately why I decided to leave them due to my usage outside, I needed close enough to 100% coverage.

Agreed, can only hope their 5G rollout improves things for them.

 

2 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

Down in Newcastle we have great coverage on Three, but as with all networks, it depends on your area. There's no denying EE's network is good, in fact when I was with EE, I don't think I ever lost signal except from in Kielder. Their 4G network is pretty quick too, I remember being really surprised when I was just doing a speed test and was getting over 100mbps down, I just think their network is way too overpriced 

For sure, EE has pretty much 95% signal where I live, compared to around 70% when I was on Three. Take into account speed and Three was just not a good partner to stay with.

 

Yes, EE can be on the pricey side, but I believe for what you're paying, you're getting near-perfect reliability in signal, speed, and plan offers. I'm on a £21 per month contract which includes 20GB of (4G) data and unlimited calls and texts within the EU. Should note that I got this plan as an offer because I was an EE customer for I think a year, and have stuck by them since. I pay for my own plan and can afford it, and I use my mobile data an awful lot so the price side of things is worth it to me.

[James300]

1 minute ago, yolosnail said:

Yeah, I have a friend who works abroad, so she has a Three PAYG plan, so when they decide she's used it abroad too much, she just gets a new sim, but they seem to have been relaxing the amount of time you can use it abroad now, she was out of the country for 4 months and they didn't stop her roaming this time

It's an absolute godsend, and their prices are insane. I got a black Friday deal for unlimited everything for £20 a month for 12 months, and fully expect a similar price for a 5G contract this time around.

 

I understand that their signal is still sketchy in areas, but if you live in an area with good coverage, three are absolutely the way to go

[spartaman64]

36 minutes ago, vinyldash303 said:

We switched to Sprint a while ago- prob 3 years or so and were only with them for about 4 months IIRC. Coverage was so shit that I didn’t have reception in our apartment, and I also couldn’t use my phone for GPS going to my friends house one town over. Its not like we lived out in the sticks either. This is one college town to a surrounding smaller town. 

i never have problems where i live which is a suburb 40 minutes away from chicago so its confusing why i would have problems in chicago where you would think they are investing a lot more into the infrastructure and i remember going to chicago in the past without signal issues

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

i never have problems where i live which is a suburb 40 minutes away from chicago so its confusing why i would have problems in chicago where you would think they are investing a lot more into the infrastructure and i remember going to chicago in the past without signal issues

4G and 5G can work together, it is just more likely you have shit service in the city because of network congestion. 

[yolosnail]

53 minutes ago, mr moose said:

4G and 5G can work together, it is just more likely you have shit service in the city because of network congestion. 

With the upgrade to 5G, Three is doing something quite unique and upgrading it's whole core network to alleviate all the congestion, so even it's 4G customers should get a speed increase, in theory at least

[paddy-stone]

On 7/26/2019 at 1:21 PM, yolosnail said:

Three UK has just announced prices for their new 5G network,  and that announcement is that there are no changes. 5G will come as standard on every plan.

 

So this means that customers will be able to get unlimited 5G data for as little as £22 per month

 

As a Three customer, this is no surprise as they did the same with the launch of 4G, when EE launched their 4G network there was a significant price increase for the faster speeds.

With the 5G launch, this is no different. EE has increased their prices for 4G, and while Vodafone has reasonable prices and unlimited data, they have speed caps on their plans, so you pay more for faster speeds.

 

The downside is Three's 5G network hasn't been rolled out yet, and my area isn't on the launch list, but the smaller cities an towns around me are!

 

 

Source:

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/threes-5g-network-wont-cost-you-any-more-than-4g

http://www.three.co.uk/5g

That's good news. I would be more excited about it though if they fixed their 4G network range.... currently my PAYG sim card on my phone nets me a whole 6Mbit/s down and about 1Mbit/s up on a 2 bar signal at home with Three. and for phone calls, sometimes get drop-outs... admittedly I am on the edge of their area though, so not a complete surprise. That's why I am more interested in Vodas 5G plans, their coverage in my area is second to none, with a full bars signal on 4G, IIRC that nets around 60+ Mbit/s in my house (I'd check, but it's my brother that's with Voda, not me). I am considering ditching my landline in the future for whoever can deliver with 4G/5G in my house, including tethering, unlimited etc... I know Voda can.

[yolosnail]

35 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

That's good news. I would be more excited about it though if they fixed their 4G network range.... currently my PAYG sim card on my phone nets me a whole 6Mbit/s down and about 1Mbit/s up on a 2 bar signal at home with Three. and for phone calls, sometimes get drop-outs... admittedly I am on the edge of their area though, so not a complete surprise. That's why I am more interested in Vodas 5G plans, their coverage in my area is second to none, with a full bars signal on 4G, IIRC that nets around 60+ Mbit/s in my house (I'd check, but it's my brother that's with Voda, not me). I am considering ditching my landline in the future for whoever can deliver with 4G/5G in my house, including tethering, unlimited etc... I know Voda can.

I'm lucky in that most networks have fairly good signal around me. Voda are supposed to have full 4G signal at my house, but I'm lucky if I get 20mbps down. In fact I'm supposed to get full 4G for the whole of my bus route, but for a considerable amount of it I scrape by with one bar of 3G. Whereas with Three I rarely get slower than 20mbps down, and it's usually a lot faster than that.

Even in central Newcastle, where I supposedly get '4G+', the speeds are appallingly slow. I've also found the call quality to be a lot clearer with Three than any other network.

But I guess because Three was built from the ground up to be a network for 'internetting', they don't have any of the legacy backbone to slow them down

[Curious Pineapple]

On 7/26/2019 at 3:18 PM, seoz said:

Absolutely, it's a dice roll for if you'll get good coverage or not on Three, which is ultimately why I decided to leave them due to my usage outside, I needed close enough to 100% coverage.

Agreed, can only hope their 5G rollout improves things for them.

 

For sure, EE has pretty much 95% signal where I live, compared to around 70% when I was on Three. Take into account speed and Three was just not a good partner to stay with.

 

Yes, EE can be on the pricey side, but I believe for what you're paying, you're getting near-perfect reliability in signal, speed, and plan offers. I'm on a £21 per month contract which includes 20GB of (4G) data and unlimited calls and texts within the EU. Should note that I got this plan as an offer because I was an EE customer for I think a year, and have stuck by them since. I pay for my own plan and can afford it, and I use my mobile data an awful lot so the price side of things is worth it to me.

Were you paying them with proper money, or that Scottish stuff with funny pictures on it? May make the difference you know

[AlTech]

Ayyyy.

 

I knew holding out would be great.

 

The best 5G UK prices combined with the UK's fastest 5G Network*2 . Sounds awesome to me. EE and BT Group needed to be dethroned.

 

*1 - Disclosure: I am a Three UK customer.

*2 According to Three UK marketing

[yolosnail]

55 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Ayyyy.

 

I knew holding out would be great.

 

The best 5G UK prices combined with the UK's fastest 5G Network*2 . Sounds awesome to me. EE and BT Group needed to be dethroned.

 

*1 - Disclosure: I am a Three UK customer.

*2 According to Three UK marketing

I think we all knew Three would do something like this, they did the same with 3G, 4G and now 5G

[jiyeon]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

The best 5G UK prices combined with the UK's fastest 5G Network*2 .

That is very much debatable. Where I live in Scotland, EE is top dog.

 

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

EE and BT Group needed to be dethroned.

I do agree that some healthy competition would be beneficial for the mobile network market. It would encourage EE to lower their prices which would be great for me as an EE customer.

[3 Lions]

Just now, seoz said:

Where I live in Scotland, EE is top dog.

EE is a solid service in my area too. 

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, seoz said:

That is very much debatable. Where I live in Scotland, EE is top dog.

In 4G EE is the best. But Three's 5G network is the only one in the UK to be considered real 5G.

3 minutes ago, seoz said:

I do agree that some healthy competition would be beneficial for the mobile network market. It would encourage EE to lower their prices which would be great for me as an EE customer.

Yeah considering BT Group have really milked their customers ad their position in the market for the past few years.