Three UK Quietly Removes Tethering Caps from 4G Mobile Plans

Mobile operator Three UK has today quietly removed the “Personal Hotspot” usage caps on their 4G mobile plans, which means that customers can now use all of their monthly data allowance to support Tethering (i.e. using your phone as a mobile broadband router for connecting other computers to the internet via WiFi etc.).

Most operators tend to place restrictions on Tethering because they know that such users often make heavier usage than those who only use it for surfing the internet via a Smartphone. It’s easy to see why when looking at Ofcom’s own statistics (here), which last year found that the average monthly data volume per household on a fixed broadband connection was 190GB vs 1.9GB per SIM on mobile.

Previously all of Three UK’s plans that supported a “Personal Hotspot” also included a usage cap for the service. For example, on their “all-you-can-eat-data” options the cap for Tethering was set at 30GB (GigaBytes) but today this mention has vanished from all of their plans. Instead the operator says: “If you’re taking out one of our plans, you can use all of your data allowance as a Personal Hotspot in the UK.”

The move may come as a pleasant surprise to some, although it was first quietly revealed back in August 2018 as part of the conclusion to Ofcom’s net neutrality linked investigation (here). Under the deal Three UK said they would remove several key restrictions from December 2018 “or earlier“. Clearly they’ve gone ahead a lot earlier (thanks to one of our readers, Blake, for spotting).

Ofcom’s Original Net Neutrality Statement

Since we opened our investigation in March 2018, Three has confirmed that it has already:

* withdrawn restrictions which slowed down speeds of Peer-to-Peer and Virtual Private Network traffic for customers when roaming within the EU; and

* withdrawn restrictions on the use of handset SIMs in dongles and mifis.

Three has also confirmed that, from December 2018 (or earlier), it will:

* cease to restrict video quality to Standard Definition when its customers are roaming in the EU;

* remove any specific tethering or hotspot allowance for new or upgrading customers, to allow for unrestricted tethering (within the UK or EU);

* remove any requirements for customers to purchase a Data Passport to tether when roaming in the EU;

* allow customers on all Advanced Plans to tether without restriction; and

* allow customers on Essential Plans to tether on their current plan, or to migrate to the nearest equivalent Advanced Plan available at that time.

We’ve been trying to chase Three UK’s PR team up about this all week but they’ve been rather vague in their replies, which is odd since the operator’s customer support staff in their high street stores were more than happy to tell us about the 4th October 2018 launch date. Everybody seems to know about it except Three’s own media team 🙂 .

At this point some of you might well be asking: “Surely they can’t afford to do that on their ‘all-you-can-eat-data’ plans too?” The answer on this seems to be a little confused because their documentation says: “Even if you used your phone for every minute of every day you could only use, subject to TrafficSense™, around 1000GB each month. We may use this cap to identify inappropriate use of the service, such as commercial use, which isn’t permitted under our terms and conditions” (here).

On the other hand the page linked above hasn’t, at the time of writing, been updated to reflect the cap’s removal and so it may change again in the future. In any case 1000GB is more than enough to make Mobile Broadband into a viable alternative to a fixed line broadband ISP connection, provided you get a good signal. Just take it with a pinch of salt until the operator clarifies any details.

According to Three ‘s support staff, the roll-out of this change will be “slow” and so some of you with advanced plans may still see the cap being mentioned on your accounts but we’ve been told that it should be removed (i.e. by the sounds of it you won’t have to re-contract in order to benefit but we’re checking). We’ll ask Three’s media team, again, if they’d care to comment and see what happens.

UPDATE 3:54pm

A spokesperson for Three UK told ISPreview.co.uk just now: “We can confirm that the limit has been removed on all-you-can-eat plans.”

UPDATE 14th October

Just a quick update to clarify one point that some people seem to be confused about. The above article only refers to Tethering in the UK, it has no relation to roaming outside of the UK where different data rules apply as you are on a different operators network. The original Ofcom statement does mention roaming too and so far that change has not been implemented, but hopefully it will follow by Dec 2018.