Mobile phone company Three UK has recently added a new option for anyone looking to sign up for mobile broadband. There is now a 40 GB data plan, costing around £45 a month, double the previous allowance of 20 GB (which admittedly only cost between £21 and £23 a month).
There are several limitations however, as the 40 GB option is only open to anyone that chooses a Huawei E5573 mobile Wi-Fi device (Mi-Fi, as Three calls it) or the lower-specced E5530 on a 12-month plan. The E5573 option costs £45 a month plus a one off charge of £19 for the hardware, whereas the E5330 is £45 a month and just £9 for the device.
The offer will likely please anyone that wants to go the mobile dongle route for their broadband, though there are still lots of good deals available for anyone opting for a fixed line broadband service. Check out comparison sites that offer mobile broadband guides which contrast prices and provide tips on choosing a mobile network and associated data plans.
If you look on Three’s website, the £45 a month 40 GB deal looks like it’s not yet listed, but we’re assured that the offer is available (perhaps the website is yet to be updated). The plan also throws in 600 minutes of UK-only calls and unlimited texts.
Three says that their 8.4 million customers use more than 45% of the UK’s data traffic and their average data consumption per user was 4.65 GB in June this year – 50% of them also use the 4G network at no additional cost.
Unfortunately, while the 40 GB deal sounds great, Ofcom’s latest Communications Market Report 2015 reckons that most UK broadband users consume more than 58 GB each month, at least for fixed line broadband, but if you can make do slightly below that, the Three deal seems fairly attractive.
Other operators in the UK, such as EE, are also giving customers special offers this summer with 100 GB of 4G data each month, free for two months only (customers have to top up £10 within 14 days of getting the plan in order to buy the data pack, and then text SUMMER100 to 150 to activate the 200 GB of free UK data).