Three UK Boost 4G and 5G Mobile Data on Pay As You Go Packs
Mobile operator Three UK has launched a new offer for their Pay As You Go (PAYG) customers, which doubles the mobile broadband data (4G or 5G) on their cheapest £10 data pack from 6GB (GigaBytes) to 12GB, while their £15 pack jumps from 20GB to 30GB. The packs, which last for 1 month, also add unlimited minutes and calls.
Excluding the optional packs, Three UK’s PAYG plans typically charge a flat fee of 10p per minute on calls or texts and 5p per MegaByte of data. The new offer on their Data Packs will be available to take from now until 9th November 2021.
In addition to the two offers, the Three PAYG App has been upgraded so you can manage and track your spend in real-time and top-up or buy data add-ons with the smoothest experience to date. The app also now allows you to auto-renew data packs every month, similar to a subscription, but you have the flexibility to cancel anytime.
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 and Linkedin.
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12GB and 30GB offers available until 09/11/2021.
So this is just a time-limited boost following in the footsteps of VMO2’s recently ended 3x PAYG data offer, Vodafone’s current 3x PAYG data offer, Voxi’s current 15GB for £10 offer and EE’s extra summer data PAYG offer…
Sometimes these promotional boosts are followed by a permanent increase in data, although never as much as the amount offered in the promo period. O2’s spring 2020 big bundle 3x data promo was followed by revised allowances when 3GB for £10 pre-offer was doubled to 6GB post-offer, likewise Vodafone’s 5x data offer last December also preceded a permanent allowance increase when a £10 bundle went from 2GB pre-offer to 5GB post-offer.
Bring back 3-2-1
Entirely agree.
I believe existing customers are still on it? I moved my mum onto it a while ago but I jumped ship back to O2 when they were offering the same package to compete with Three.
Nope. The 321 Sims continue but charged at much high rates. No refund of previous credit either. The industry has lost interest in cheap PAYG plans sadly.
What stands out is the Marketing department doing its trick. So what I mean is that if you have 30Gb and it download at speed of 3Mbit there is no incentive for you to have that 30GB.
I would kindly ask that Three to provide proper speed and coverage instead of increasing the monthly allowance.
Beat me to it. They haven’t got the available bandwidth to offer their customers what they’re already getting let alone more.
They applied for planning permission to build several new monopole masts around my town. If they all get built they’ll have the densest network as well as the most 5G spectrum.
Unfortunately the council has refused every application, so there will now be a further delay while they appeal each decision to the planning inspectorate.
Better off going with SMARTY, which is owned by Three anyway.
Incan assure you wholeheartedly you are not! I was with them and it ‘was’ great, I got 4G speeds of around 12 in my home. Then it plummeted and dropped to 1mbps or less consistently. If you use their 3G then you get 13mbps or more. I left them a while ago cause of that. Funnily enough I tried them again in the last couple of weeks and it’s still just as poor. 4G on Smarty is not worth it. Smarty’s support advice, turn off 4G and use 3G all the time. Not very useful.
They say drop to 3G as the local network is congested (too many users on your mast connected to 4G causing slow intermittent speeds).
Three (and smarty) do have the best 3G network for speed and it does alleviate the issues somewhat except for ping which can be high at times 100ms or more.
In my experience, Three and smarty provide the exact same offering, including 5G access and the same speeds all day long.
I should have checked for typo’s in my last reply.
I appreciate its congestion. It’s just pretty awful that in 2021 you have to use 3G to be able to do anything. A service that I believe is being switched off at some point?
Smarty’s 3G is the best certainly, but yes the pings are terrible. They seriously need a backbone upgrade but it will be a long time coming I fear.
To be honest the 4G speeds are the only bad thing about Smarty.
Its never that simple. On contract I had good speeds of 50-100Mbit for a couple of months, then it constantly tanked to 20Mbit with 2000ms latency and sometimes single-digit Mbits for the rest of my 24 month contract.
Vodafone on the other hand the local mast seems to only cover the local area so I consistently get at least 60Mbit and frequently 120Mbit on 4G. Its so stable I can run a VPN over it, something which Three had too much packet loss to handle.
There’s just so much luck involved with mast location, coverage area and thus contention. I take all claims of “best network” with a pinch of salt, you have to try them for yourself.
I left three this last month after complaining for over a year and a half about my mast contention and them doing absolutely nothing about it. I was having to schedule downloads during the early hours because every evening my speeds would plummet to sub 1mbps speeds, yet at 2am it’d be 150mbps+. Watching youtube on one pc in the evening would buffer or drop to low res, using the xbox at all was pointless, it was just totally unworkable not being able to use my broadband when I wanted too.
I complained to them until I was blue in the face, got promises it’d be resolved by a set date time and time again and it never was. Even had my last three months at zero cost, but they simply were incapable of resolving the issue.
They let me leave before my contract end-date without penalty and also refunded me the credits on my account.
Three need to stop their marketing department dictate policy IMHO. If three’s network struggles to cope with the demand their current subscribers put on their few existing masts, why are they giving away extra data? Sales, that’s why.
I firmly believe Three isn’t bothered that it can’t deliver decent speeds, its bothered about signing up new subscribers and nothing else.
As long as there are plenty of mugs that still sign up they won’t change.
After being promised 5G broadband back in July 2019 I kept checking every so often with their coverage checkers and hurray a week ago it finally said available in my area ( West London ). Swapped my Vodafone sim ( 350-400mb on average ) with my Three one in my HUAWEI 5G CPE Pro. Got 250mb which I thought wasn’t too shabby since the coverage checker says it was outdoor only. Since that first reading I only get 50mb or 75mb ( 1am ) at a push. So still glad that my contract is over on the 21st ! lol They don’t have the backhaul: over promise and underdeliver in urban areas.
Its not just urban area’s, it’s everywhere.
Would be great if they had a £5 option.
Non of the providers offer a £5 a month option. It’s either £10 or their out of bundle rates.
For light users who have access to other communication devices it doesn’t make sense to fork out £10 a month for light use on a secondary device or pay above average out of bundle rates.
They do via their SMARTY network (owned by Three, same signal).
Although not publicised much, here’s the links:
https://smarty.co.uk/plans/500mb-data
Or use this offer one for more data:
https://smarty.co.uk/plans/2gb-data-ndd
@guy – Great, thanks
Take a look at 1p Mobile.
1p per minute/text/mb, 5G and wifi/4g calling with no speed caps, also £15 for 50gb data. Uses the EE network.
We, just need Apple Watch support and esim, hopefully very soon!
Second that! Would be first PAYG provider to do it.
But only for “New Pay as Go Plans”. Existing custumers (1-2-3 plan) get only 4 GB for 10 GPB and pay 20 GPB for 12 GBP.