Mobile Operator Three UK Launch New Three Your Way 5G Plans
Mobile operator Three UK has today launched a new range of ‘Three Your Way‘ plans, which allows new customers to choose to pay for their device over a 12, 24 or even 36-month period, as well as to choose one of three, 12 or 24-month Airtime plans, each of which comes with their own range of benefits.
The three new airtime plans are known as ‘Standard‘, ‘Plus‘ and ‘Premium‘. But at launch you’re currently only be able to take the ‘Standard’ plans online, while Plus and Premium can only be taken while shopping in-store or via the operator’s Contact Centre. We’re not sure why they’ve done this, although we’d assume that the additional plans will make their way online eventually.
The Standard plan is a fairly vanilla mobile package that includes ‘Free 5G Access‘, ‘Unlimited texts‘ and ‘Unlimited calls‘, alongside the usual choice of data allowances (capped or unlimited). By comparison, Plus gives access to Paramount+ (streaming) for half the length of your plan, as well as up to 3 years extended warranty (when taken with a device) and the ability to use your phone on your travels for up to 28 days a year (roaming in 71 worldwide destinations).
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Finally, the Premium plan includes all of the above, but it also gives you Paramount+ for the full length of your plan and the ability to use your phone on your travels for up to 56 days a year. Screen repair is also included on 24-month plans, when taken with a device.
A Three spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:
“We are always looking for ways to deliver better experience. As part of this, we are introducing Three Your Way – a range of new plans that will provide even greater choice, benefits, and flexibility to new Three customers.”
Sadly, we can’t see how much Three’s Plus and Premium plans cost without going into a store, but their Standard plans appear to follow the same pricing as their previous plans (judging by how much they cost on the SIM Only tariffs).
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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they’ve also finally launched esim as an option
yeah and they won’t give business customers one. fantastic.
Not sure if I like this Esim idea to be honest, With a normal sim it is easy to change to another network if need be.
@Ad47uk – it’s no more difficult to switch networks with an esim than it is with a normal sim
@THX, Maybe for a one-off thing, if you are just changing networks, but if you want to change the sim for a few days if you are going abroad then that is more difficult, some people have dual sim phones, can that be done with Esim? I prefer the old sim system. This Esim idea have been around for years and yet most phones still don’t use it.
Ad47uk also thinks we don’t need gigabit internet and 8mbps adsl is enough for everyone.
Having an eSIM compatible phone doesn’t stop you putting a physical SIM, as long as the phone has one. I believe so far only iPhone 14s sold in the USA lack a SIM slot.
The ONLY thing which is slightly more difficult with an eSIM is moving your ‘SIM’ from one device to another, which the majority only do when they buy a new phone, which is getting less and less regular.
@Ad47UK in iPhone at least, you can pretty much have as many eSIMs as you want. Only two can be active at once but the device can store a whole bunch of them.
Only when you’re signing up to their new plans. You can’t request one.
Full prices are on the new price guide https://test.three.co.uk/cs/Satellite?blobkey=id&blobnocache=false&blobwhere=1400724037656&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs
Link to test page with invalid TLS cert
Did you look at the certificate? The only mismatch is that certificate was issued for [www].three.co.uk and is being used on [test].three.co.uk
The link itself works fine.
I did look, cert is invalid.
Three? No thanks, never ever again.
I gave them another go recently. Still utterly pants in the evening, thank god for the 30 day money back trial.
Bit Vodafoney 😉
Awful broadband very rarely works I pay £26 pounds to watch a spinning wheel can’t get through a film on Netflix without buffering
I had that too. I complained so much they let me leave 6 months into 18 month contract. Junk
Phone was not much better – dumped all 3 sims for Sky Mobile and currently happy
Am I the only person who actually enjoys three then? they’ve been solid for me and I get like 900 megabits during the day and 600-700 at night. No complaints from me, for £18 and a real IP with no CGNAT. But yet every time a three article comes up all the comments are slagging it off and praising EE.
As a member of Three I can say that I see this all the time and it’s always Vodafone and EE that are apparently the better choice. I know first hand all of our tariffs are cheaper then all competitors across the board.. and we are the fastest 5g provider 3 years in a row… comments make me laugh
I have Smarty which is on the 3 network, and it works fine for what I use it for, speed wise it is faster than my home broadband, 44Mb/s down and around 20 up.
That is 4G, I don’t have any problems with it.
Three seem to be ether blazing fast or terribly slow in my experience and where I live in rural Shropshire you still hit 3G a lot from legacy masts… Three are on the right path, just not there yet. For me Vodafone is not the fastest, but deliver a consistent “OK” experience, I’ve said before if this Voda/3 merger goes ahead it will great a great network if they do it right.
I enjoy three. 2020-2021 the performance was terrible at times, but things are picking back up. I tend to get more than enough bandwidth in most places I go.
5G coverage is also great – compared to the others. O2 5G, where are you?
@Pepstar I have to agree with you on this. Three are really ploughing ahead with their 5G rollout, and they now have more 5G coverage and faster 5G speeds than any other network. Unfortunately, this is offset with areas of congested 4G where data is either slow or simply unusable. Over time this issue should disappear, but rolling out new masts is a slow process (in no small part due to all the planning applications that get rejected).
Whereas Vodafone have nothing like the 5G speeds/coverage, but their overall coverage is better than Three’s, and where they do have coverage, data tends to work.
The thing with Three is, for 4G if you can get Band 32, then download speeds are quite decent. Or if you can get 5G, then download speeds are quite decent. If you can’t get either in your home, then you will be looking at often sub-1mbps download at least in London, even with 4x carrier aggregation. It’s abysmal. But as their 5G n78 coverage expands, and hopefully more B32 is rolled out, then the network should get better.
Seems a bit late too the party, o2 started refresh tariffs almost a decade ago, sky mobile, tesco and virgin media now vm02 have been doing device financing and airtime separate for years and years, Vodafone launched their proposition almost 2 years ago. Three are so late to the device financing / airtime contract proposition that its almost laughable launching this with much fanfare
That being said im a three customer and their 5g speeds are stunning, genuinely stunning. Area dependant of course. The rest of my family are on voda and three trumps the speeds and coverage that voda offer pretty much everytime we are out together
I rushed into three, twenty years ago, and it was the worst experience of my 6 months of contract … Through many CEO emails, I finally got it killed off.
Call centre through to people who not only are basically unable to speak English, they also couldn’t understand English. Business customers had Glasgow for a call centre, but standard was via India
Fones came with 2 batteries and still wouldn’t last half a day, as it spent all it’s time searching for a connection. That was in a top ten sized city!
It’s still very marmite judging by the comments, and so many still haunted from years ago.
Not sure I’d want to leave to join three, but I might leave my network for voda tho. Especially as locally they seem to actually enjoy data.
Will prob do a deal with the fone company, and get a SIM only deal.
They’ve changed a massive amount since then and are quite a bit better. It’s a shame though that their network is still very patchy. Either excellent or poor from one place to another. Their decision to end roaming really was a huge shot in the foot though. It was one of the major reasons a lot of people were with them.
Their network was never good in my areas, home and work, but I put up with Three for 2 reasons; 1) I got dirt cheap deal on unlimited everything sim-only; 2) free roaming in the EU and selected others.
As soon as they killed the free roaming completely I thought they would let me stay on the old price plan with the old T&C forever. But finally came an email & text saying that they could no longer allow me stay where I was. So, it was a goodbye then. Given their network hasn’t been great, I won’t consider them anytime in the near future.
Exactly the same with me. I suspect they have massively underestimated how many people only stayed with them for roaming. Nobody ever chose Three because of the consistency of their signal
@THX – at least if they reverted back to how it all started, i.e. free roaming in countries where sister Three networks operate (e.g. Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Hong Kong etc), I would still have stayed. But to remove these perks completely whilst hiking the base prices significantly, they’ve just lost their niche.
Although their 5g network is undeniably the fastest in the country, but it’s still patchy and will likely take years to expand. Even 4g 10 years after launch, it’s still patchy and remains the least reliable in urban areas.
(Disclaimer: I carry multiple phones, each on different network. Hence, I speak from personal experience).
I’m in loughborough UK, I have the 4g hub ZTE MF286D. It’s been faultless for 6 months now 50 down 25 up. Just plug it in and away you go. I’m also with smarty for my sim £5 a month unlimited text, unlimited calls and 5g of data. 5g speeds are mental. £16 a month for my hub, unlimited data and no upfront cost and you keep the hub at the end of the 2 year term. And yes its unlocked so I can stick any sim in I like, but I will be extending my contract if this performance continues..
You’ll have problems using the MF286D from Three on another network due to failing DNS lookups. I have one but I use it as a bridge/modem so don’t have this issue. There are threads about it on forums, I’m not sure anybody ever found a fix.
I was on 3 for years, then moved to id mobile and speeds have dropped.
I don’t know if it’s just got busy or iD is throttled.
Anyone know if the mvno’s get equal performance as the main carrier or is some kind of throttling / degraded experience an expected thing for paying less on an mvno?
That really is a paltry amount of roaming allowance.
Totally rubbish isn’t it. I wonder what kind of state Three is in behind the scenes. We know they’ve been in talks with Vodafone to merge as both of them are having trouble. I don’t see these new plans taking them forward at all. Very overpriced, and for a network which is notorious for its patchiness.
Just looking at the plans, they really are very overpriced. Cant see them getting much traction for Three, given the notorious inconsistency of their network. They’re either brilliant or appalling. The roaming offer is very poor, as is the screen repair (they’ll still charge you £25!) In terms of pricing and roaming, I think they’ve been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by some of o2’s deals. That’s a dangerous position for a company like Three that really needs to be hyper competitive.
@conor – slightly weird use of language. You’re not a “member” of Three. They’re a company, not a society or club. You’re a customer, possibly an employee. Also saying “our” tariffs? I’d have to disagree with you about them being cheapest. They’re certainly not. I’m currently on o2. 30 day sim only contract. 50gb for £9 and free, unlimited EU roaming. There’s nothing Three do that is anywhere near that.
Completely agree.. I love three 5G mobile sim broadband.. Just as fast as virgin n my opinion
Virtual networks all the way…
I don’t want gimmicky streaming subscriptions, 3 year contracts or limited roaming options.
Give me a network that gives EU Roaming, unlimited call and texts, on a 30 day rolling plan, for a fraction of the price and I’m happy.
Companies like Lebara, ID Mobile and Smarty are whipping the ass of the big boys, just wish more people knew about them!
Plus plans are an additional £5 per month, Premium are an addition £10 per month. A note on eSim, it’s reactive only. If you ask for eSim you’ll get it but it will not be proactively offered to customers. So it’s less being “offered” and more so there as an option if asked for.
I got the Three ZTE C564E3 5G hub last September and was initially very impressed after slinging Virgin Media out the door. A third of the price and speeds sometimes hitting 300Mbps. Although this varied considerably over the day I was more than happy. And then it started dropping out… It’s now dropping signal several times a day and to fix it I have to restart the 5G router on the admin page (this is easier than switching it on an off as I have a Deco mesh attached, the router being in bridge mode). I think you can imagine how this goes down in the middle of Happy Valley…
I’ve spoken to support who were very nice but insisted I factory reset, which was really annoying as it knocks out all port forwarding and, of course, takes it out of bridge mode. Needless to say it made no difference. Another call to support and a very nice chap says he’ll get engineering to call me back. Never happened. I’ve now made repeated comments via Twitter and I’m sure they have a bot responding to me.
My 5G signal strength is around -89dbm, which as I understand it, is pretty good. It’s actually better than the 4G signal here (London N11).
I strongly suggested last time that I thought the problem is with the hub and that it might be a good idea to replace it, but to no avail. Not sure what else to do!! I’m only on monthly so I can leave anytime, but I really don’t want to go back to the likes of Sky or Virgin.
Will Three stick to their deal? I bought a 321 SIM for a backup phone. After I had paid my money Three reduced the value of the SIM by over 90% and disabled EU roaming despite painting that they wouldn’t on the side of a bus and parking it outside the Palace of Westminster! (sound familiar?)
no.
they are under no obligation to. no contract, you agree to any change in the terms and conditions simply by using the service.
I remember that bus and the NHS one.
means nowt eh.
Bizarrely, it is better in every sense just to get a Three (new version) PAYG and add a data pack to auto renew:
£10/m -> 20GB, unlimited mins, unlimited texts, 71 country free roaming and can leave any time
or
£15/m -> 50GB …..