Three or 3UK, the Hutchison owned mobile network is getting the iPhone 4. Finally. We’ve been waiting for a lonnnng time for the UK’s 5th and newest network to come over to the iSide.
There are a few good reasons to consider Three.
First, their network is not shit. It was, oh yes. But that was years ago. No, their network is actually extremely good.
Second, their data network is magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. I’m sure this is because there’s less traffic on their network in general (just look at how poor o2 has been dealing with the weight of iPhone data traffic — not good) but they’ve also heavily invested in their 3G network technology.
Third, they’re likely to want your business.
Three have, from where I’m standing, been all over the place when it comes to premium customers. A good few years ago the company began offering top level handsets to attract serious spenders — and when combined with unlimited data offering, this worked really well. Then the network appeared to loose its way, arsing around after the shittest of the shit customers that not even the biggies wanted. Rubbish deals like ‘you make money when someone calls you’ appealed to the cheapsakes in the economy. The company ended up building a large amount of bollocks customers. If you could call them that. Whilst o2 and Vodafone were knocking back the 50-quid-a-month contract customers, Three continued to dance with the £0.02/month customers who would do anything to avoid paying.
Whilst that helps boost ‘subscriber’ numbers, it really doesn’t help with revenue.
So it’s been good to see Three offer progressively better and more interesting handsets at premium costs, attracting a good class of customer. They needed to do this to make the likes of the iPhone and some of their higher end Android/BlackBerry devices worthwhile.
There was no point offering a million cheapskate users the first and second generation iPhone models. Not when their average revenues per year, per customer, top out at 12 pence.
Yeah, I’m exaggerating slightly. But you know what I mean.
Anyway it’s all change. I’m definitely going to consider Three for iPhone 4.
One note: Although Three is likely to want your business more than the other networks, there will be precious little they can do on the price plan front because of Apple restrictions. But I’m hopeful there might be a few other beads-to-the-natives that they could offer to get your attention. Perhaps some accessories or a second-line deal or something. We shall see.
I have a contract with Three for my wife's phone. I called a few weeks ago to kill it and move her to an O2 SIM only deal like mine, but barely had I finished the sentence 'can I have my PAC?' than the nice chap was offering a free iPhone 3GS 16GB on a lower cost contract than the existing one. Obviously I took it.
A couple of days later a shiny new iPhone turns up, imported from Italy it seems. So while Three weren't officially offering iPhones, they were using them as a very effective retention tool. Having moved on from her E71, my wife is now absolutely loving the whole new world of easily accessible apps.
There are, as you point out Ewan, still plenty of good things to say about Three.
Wow, brilliant!!
Interested to know how you think the other operators will react to O2's sensible move on capping their unlimted broadband offer with the intro of the new iphone. Voda and Orange already seem to cap at 1GB and 750MB, will they shift down to match or keep at current level? Will 3 keep it unlimited? I suppose the risk is that the operator with the most generous terms will be a magnet for the O2 iphone datahogs – 1% of iphone users account for ~ 40% of traffic
any thoughts
Mark
Well, the message is actually the coolest on this subject is worthwhile. I fit their conclusions and will eagerly look forward to input updates. Saying thanks not only be sufficient, tremendous clarity in his writing. Once I grab your RSS feed to stay informed of updates. Wonderful work and much success in your business relationships!
iPhone 4 can change all the way people think about Social Media.