Three UK Launch 4G Home Broadband Plan with Unlimited Data

Mobile operator Three UK has launched a new 3G / 4G supporting Mobile Broadband router and data plan called HomeFi that’s aimed at home users, which is one of the first such packages that we’ve seen to include “unlimited data” and at a cost of just £22 per month on a 24 month contract term.

The new Home-Fi package is designed to be used like a home broadband connection, albeit delivered over Three’s mobile network instead of a fixed line connection. As such the bundle includes a Huawei B311 router, which is able to distribute the mobile data connection out to a maximum of up to 32 connected devices (Phones, Laptops etc.) via WiFi (only supports the 2.4GHz band).

Assuming the router that Three has chosen to ship is the same as the unbranded model then it should also include one Ethernet port for LAN/WAN and is capable of delivering a peak theoretical 4G (LTE Cat 4, 2*2 MIMO) speed of 150Mbps download (50Mbps upload); but expect to get a lot less than that in the real-world. As usual customers will also benefit from the operator’s “Go Binge” service (i.e. unlimited video streaming via Netflix etc.).

According to the operator this plan does indeed give you “unlimited data“, although their press release has confusingly described the plan as “100GB data plus an unlimited data add-on” (eh?) and if you go through the order process then it comes up as “Plan – 100GB data – 24 month” (no mention of unlimited).

Despite this confusion Three’s PR people continue to insist that it will give you unlimited data, which leads us to believe that this plan is a time-limited special offer and as such you’ll get probably “unlimited” data for the first 24 months and after that it may revert to 100GB (if not then we’d expect a lot of advertising complaints to the ASA).

In fairness Three’s sibling fixed wireless ISP in London, Relish Wireless, does already offer an unlimited 4G based plan for exactly the same price, although that is a different network setup but Three have made no secret of their desire to launch a similar sort of service nationwide via their future 5G network (here).

However we suspect that even this plan is still subject to Three’s TrafficSense management system, which uses a soft cap of “around” 1000GB (1 TeraByte) each month to “identify inappropriate use of the service, such as commercial use, which isn’t permitted under our terms and conditions” (here). Nevertheless that would still be very impressive for a 4G service.