Shocker! Three's unlimited data adopters use lots of 3G
Three, a UK mobile network provider specializing in unlimited data packages, has reported that its customers are talking full advantage of their plans. Specifically, the average monthly usage has more than doubled this summer (we use the term loosely) from 450MB to 1.1GB over the same period last year. Smartphone users are understandably the healthiest eaters, sucking down around 1.5GB per month. With the BBC continuing to expand its 3G offerings and an undoubted increase in tablet use, tethering and the like, we imagine these figures are far from their peak. With 4G on the horizon, will Three regret positioning itself as the great provider; or, like Sprint over in the US, will it stand its ground for the sake of an advantage?
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24 Jul 2012 09:00
Three's smartphone customers double their data use in less than a year
Customers on Three now enjoy 1.1 GB of data each month
In less than a year Three's four million contract mobile phone customers have more than doubled their monthly data use. This dramatic shift in consumer behaviour has seen the average amount of data used by contract customers each month soar to 1.1 gigabytes (GB). Average use last summer was just 450 megabytes (MB).
Three's customers using iPhones and premium Android smartphones are already using almost 1.5GB per month. This is significantly more than the allowances of 1GB or less sold to 66% of the UK's smartphone users on competing networks*.
Dave Dyson, chief executive officer, Three said: "With 95% of our smartphone customers using data on a daily basis, everyone is relying more than ever on their handset to do all the stuff they used to do on the internet at home or work. And there is no sign of this slowing down.
"Give consumers a combination of the right device, the right price plan and a mobile network built for the internet and you see a rapid behavioural shift. We are seeing more and more people using more and more data throughout the day.
"Price plans that remove the fear of going over a data limit enable demand to grow as consumers are free to discover just how much they can do on the move. Even I don't understand how much data I use on a daily basis so it's no surprise that having an all you can eat worry-free data package is proving to be so popular with our customers."
Three offers all you can eat data on all of its tariffs with prices on Pay As You Go and Pay Monthly starting from as little as £13 per month.
Graham Baxter, chief operating officer at Three, who is responsible for Three's network said: "Since 2008 we have invested over £1 billion in almost doubling the size of our network and boosting its capacity and quality in order to handle this data traffic explosion. Today we have an award-winning network and it's the only network in the UK that's built specifically for the mobile internet. We cover 98% of the UK's population and it's great to see that our customers are doing so much more of the things they enjoy on their smartphones."
