Vodafone and Three UK Deploy Joint Network Sharing to 8,000 Mast Sites
Mobile operator VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) has revealed that 8,000 mast sites have now been upgraded to implement their new Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN). This is one of the first big benefits of the recent merger (here and here) – allowing customers to roam across both networks at no extra cost (whichever one provides the best signal).
As previously reported, it could take a total of 8 years to fully complete the roll-out of these upgrades (it will be 95% complete after 6 years). The deployment is thus initially being strategically focused on areas of the country that will gain the most benefit from it (i.e. those with a poor 4G or 5G signal from one or the other operator).
The fact they’ve gone from 600 sites in August 2025 to 8,000 now means that they’re on course to hit or possibly even exceed their original target of 9,000 sites by the end of the first year of VodafoneThree being formed (March 2026).
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Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer, VodafoneThree said:
“I’m incredibly proud that we’ve reached another significant milestone in our mission to build the UK’s best network.
The team have been working extremely hard to deliver this world-leading project, bringing the Vodafone and Three networks together to unlock significant benefits for customers across the UK.
Today, more than 21 million customers in over 8,000 locations can connect to the best available coverage at no extra cost, with many now enjoying 4G and 5G where it wasn’t previously available, and faster speeds overall.
However this is just the beginning, so I’m even more excited to see what we can deliver together over the coming years.”
The merged company ultimately also aims to reach 99% UK population coverage of their 5G Standalone (5G SA) network by 2030 and then 99.96% by 2034, while also pushing fixed wireless access (mobile home broadband) to 82% of households by 2030. But we’d much prefer to see figures for geographic coverage.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Rubbish they haven’t done it in my area. Just nothing yet.
They should have done your area first, why didn’t they?
You can see if it your area is “soon”, use the Voda coverage checker, select 5G (or 4G), then use the “3 month” slider to see now and next coverage. (The Three coverage checker does not have a “3 month” slider).
If you want to see how this works, look up coverage for Holt, Norfolk and you can see a change when using the slider (Three has a tall well placed mast in the town, shared with EE, both now offering 5G for this upscale rural town; Voda/O2 mast does not have 5G and is less well placed for more upscale/new build parts of the town and the mast is shorter)
As a customer of both networks id like to know which specific sites they have done to I can assess the impact.
Does this network sharing apply to their MNVO’s as well?
Some. Smarty and Talkmobile
My missus uses Voxi & she had a text message from them the other day about the Vodafone & Three networks merging together. Apparently the coverage will get better in the future.
> Some. Smarty and Talkmobile
It applies to all MVNOs on Three UK and Vodafone UK.
Vodafone network has become worse in my area and now can’t use Internet at all during the day
In East Anglia they have been working on large City sites, like Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds etc
Could be years before we see any movements in the Rural areas, with a single Mast covering a small villages
They have done something here, because in Morrison’s last Thursday my phone kept cutting out, Vodarubbish takes over Three and makes it worse.
Could just have been a problem at that time, but I doubt it.
Sounds like a very slow merger. Pretty sure other network mergers were completed much quicker.
compared to whom?
T-Mobile/Orange achieved a quick win by enabling cross-network roaming, but the experience was far poorer as the phone would want to stay on its “native” network before trying the other one, and calls would drop during the switchover. The experience was also similarly poor when 3 itself had 2G roaming deals with O2 and later with Orange. A MOCN doesn’t have this problem.
Neither approach is truly considered a network merger, though.
Need to give them chance to sack the workers they think they no longer need… they can’t do it too quickly as it’ll hammer their reputation 🙁
I use to have Three as my second sim for backup & data and Voda was my main number. As they are now together who would you recomend for the backup sim?
Also if you are connected to Three will the havdset say that or just Vodafone?
Handset will report the network you are subscribed to and not what your connected to.
From: https://www.three.co.uk/why-three/best-ever-network
“Will I be able to tell when I am using either the Vodafone or the Three network?
Your device will show as your normal provider. You’ll simply notice that you get improved 4G, or 5G coverage, where you might not have had it before.”
For a backup, O2 or EE are the only two choices you have left. Probably best checking their coverage for the areas you tend to be.
I use vodafone as my main number, and got a cheap unlimited EE sim for my data.. I’ve actually found EE overall better but where EE is bad, Vodafone is brilliant. hopefully vodafone can catch up to EE overall then i can ditch the EE sim
and yet three installed a mast just a few weeks ago near me to replace an ancient 4G one, and it does not share with vodafone
Might change quite soon, see my post above about Voda coverage checker as a diagnostic tool for forthcoming changes.
Changing scope of a project in flight is something that should not be done lightly, better to do a post-implementation change order as part of a wider change.
I use Smarty. (3) As yet I’ve noticed zero improvement on call quality with the same dead spots on the M1 and M6 now as there were 12 months ago.
Why does this require a physical visit to each mast and can’t be done with software remotely?
also, how many masts are left to do?
It doesn’t require a physical visit to each mast
@anon if it doesnt require physical visit to sites then why do they appear as planning permission and physical work taking place? Take a look on mastdata site
A shameful company. They’ve just told all their Three shop staff that they will be closing all of the Three shops down due the merger and moving them to work for the Vodafone Franchise owners over the coming 6 months to 2 years as the shop leases expire. This will mean every shop will have unsustainable two sets of managers and two sets of sales staff working in them. The Three staff will then have only basic contractual terms and be sacked within 2 years when the Franchise owner is no longer financially supported by Vodafone to keep them. Losing each ex-Three staff member thousands in redundancy payments, and saving Vodafone millions. That’s what they meant in their press release saying that they had no planned redundancies in retail as a result of the merger. They will leave that to and blame the Franchise holders for doing it. So much for Vodafone trying to put a people friendly and caring front for PR’s sake. They’d sell their own grandmothers down the river! Loyal staff being thrown to the wolves. Shameful.
Most of us knew this was going to happen. We even knew it was a backdoor buy out.
Three’s signal has always been OK. Backhaul on the other hand has been woeful. How does this reflect in the metrics?
*mastdatabase
There have been noticeable improvements in the Margate Cliftonville area recently, but Vodafone still isn’t using Three’s network masts locally. I currently use ID Mobile, and also I was pleasantly surprised that ID connects to Three’s underground WiFi too.
Three UK has 18,400 masts and vodafone has 18,000 masts, so ~36,000 total. Upgrading 8,000 of them is less than a quarter.
Since they had started to make changes things have got worse, traffic management at peak times now means constant disconnects on the network and without tracking the cellid that’s difficult to tell which it is. 3 weeks ago no issues. Now devices are forced off every 30min during peak times.
Switched to EE no problems.
It might be technically a great merger but the backhaul cannot keep up.