Three UK Bring WiFi to London Underground and Refresh SIM Only Plans

Mobile operator Three UK has signed an agreement with Virgin Media that will enable their customers to access the cable operators WiFi wireless Internet network at 137 London Underground stations for free, just as Vodafone, EE and O2 already can. The provider has also refreshed their SIM-Only plans with better Mobile Broadband allowances.

Three’s Director of Customer Strategy, Danny Dixon, told TechRadar that the new WiFi service using Virgin Media’s network was due to go live by the end of July 2014 and this means that customers will be able to surf online for free while hovering around the ticket halls, corridors and platforms of all 137 enabled stations.

Separately Three UK have also refreshed their SIM-Only plans, which now give customers a bit more choice between having a larger Internet data allowance or taking more minutes and a smaller data allowance. In addition the top tariffs still come with “all-you-can-eat” data, although we note that the Personal Hotspot (Tethering) allowance has recently changed from being capped to 2GB (GigaBytes) to a more respectable 4GB and all now come with free calls to 0800/0500 numbers.

Tom Malleschitz, Three’s Marketing Director, said:

“People want choice and control so they are able to enjoy their devices without worrying about bill shock. These SIM-only plans give them exactly that. They’ll also benefit from free 0800 numbers and with Feel At Home customers can use the internet and call and text home while in Australia, France, Italy, the USA and twelve other countries out of their UK allowance.”

The cheapest SIM-Only plan is fairly unchanged from the old one and starts at £7 per month on a 12 month contract, which includes 500MB (0.5GB) of data, “all-you-can-eat” Texts and 200 minutes of calls (previously their cheapest offer was £6.90 and the only difference was a 5000 text allowance). But after this you start to see more choice, for example at £10 per month on a 12 month contract you can either have 1GB data, 600 minutes and all-you-can-eat texts or 2GB of data, 200 minutes and all-you-can-eat texts.

The eagle eyed among you will notice that the new packages are technically slightly more expensive than the older ones, although this does rather depend upon whether you view calls/texts or data usage as being more important for your needs and how having a 1 or 12 month contract factors into that decision. For example, the cheapest tariff with “all-you-can-eat” data is now £18 instead of £20 but you do sacrifice voice calls. Check out our Mobile SIM-Only Operators list for more comparisons.