VodafoneThree Outline Future UK Network Plans and 4G to 5G Speed Boosts
VodafoneThree, which reflects the now finalised c.£16bn merger between Vodafone and Three UK (here), has this morning set out a set of post-merger plans for their 4G / 5G mobile (mobile broadband) network coverage, performance and branding. Starting with a 20% average speed boost on 4G for Three and SMARTY customers, and a new broadband partnership with CommunityFibre.
At this point we already know, from prior announcements, that VodafoneThree plan to invest £11bn to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next ten years. The combined business has also previously stated that it aspires to reach more than 99% of the UK population with their 5G Standalone (SA) network by 2034 and push fixed wireless access (mobile home broadband) to 82% of households by 2030, among other things.
The hard part of this process, which involves integrating teams (some potential for redundancies in this area), networks and offices, has now begun. As a result of that, VodafoneThree has this morning set out a refined set of post-merger plans and network targets.
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The move highlights just how quickly the operator intends to bring everything together; while also respecting the binding commitments they made as part of the agreement. The announcement includes quite a lot of sporadic detail, so we’ve opted to shrink this down into a bullet point summary below. It’s worth a read, due to so many changes being introduced.
Max Taylor, CEO of VodafoneThree, added: “A new era of connectivity has begun. We will connect every nation, every community, in every corner of the UK. We will build the UK’s best 5G network with an unprecedented £11bn privately funded infrastructure project, laying the digital foundation for our country’s growth ambitions. Benefits for our 27 million mobile customers will start within months, with access to roam across both networks at no extra cost. From big cities to small towns, and everywhere in between, our mission is to build the UK’s best network”.
VodafoneThree’s Plan
➤ Over time, Vodafone and Three UK will integrate into one physical network, which will be called: The Nation’s Network.
➤ The new company will operate a multi-brand mobile strategy in their consumer business, with Vodafone, Three UK, VOXI, SMARTY and Talkmobile remaining (on the same single network).
➤ Vodafone will be the only brand for business customers, with one team able to tailor solutions to a customer’s needs.
➤ Over the next 12 months, VodafoneThree will bring Three’s mobile broadband (Fixed Wireless Access) products together with Vodafone’s Full Fibre (FTTP) into one home broadband portfolio, under the Vodafone brand. There will only be one converged brand for both businesses and consumers.
➤ Aims to reach 99.95% UK population coverage of their 5G Standalone (5G SA) network by 2034. The network will be built at speed, with the 5G SA build plan being front-loaded so that, by the end of the third year, it will hit 90% population coverage from a current baseline of 47%. Around 71% of the UK population (circa 50 million) will have access to their fastest 5G speeds by the end of year one.
➤ Within just two weeks, through the sharing of combined spectrum, 7 million Three UK and SMARTY customers will receive an improvement in 4G data speeds (mobile broadband) of up to 20% (average).
➤ Within a few months, 27 million Vodafone and Three UK mobile customers will start to benefit from unrivalled access to roam on each other’s networks at no extra cost. It will happen automatically, with no need to change a thing (phones will connect to the best coverage available). By the end of the year this will remove a total of 16,500 sq/km of not spots – equivalent to 10x the size of London – with the first sites already having been turned on.
➤ By this time next year (June 2026), VodafoneThree will launch beta trials on a ‘first-of-its-kind’, space-based satellite mobile network, thanks to Vodafone’s partnership with AST Space Mobile. This will complement the existing network build, eliminating coverage gaps in places that otherwise couldn’t be reached.
➤ Within two years, the company will open two new customer care centres in Belfast and Sheffield, bringing 400 sales and customer service roles back to the UK, alongside the existing call centres in Stoke and Glasgow. Crucially there are “no planned retail redundancies“.
➤ VodafoneThree will launch a new ‘Just Ask Once’ Promise on the Vodafone brand from July 2025. ‘Just Ask Once’ will aim to resolve any query, quickly and painlessly, with a dedicated advisor who proactively updates the customer, and if the issue isn’t resolved to the customers satisfaction, they will be able to simply part ways without penalty.
➤ VodafoneThree has today announced a new partnership with CommunityFibre in London, bringing faster fixed FTTP broadband speeds to even more homes. This builds on existing agreements with Openreach and CityFibre.
➤ Over the entire 8-year build period, VodafoneThree will create and sustain demand for, on average, 9,000 jobs, with peak investment years (years 2-6) seeing as many as 13,000 jobs created across the UK (74% outside London and the South East).
➤ By consolidating networks, VodafoneThree’s energy consumption will be around 31% lower than it would have been as two separate networks. In addition, VodafoneThree will reduce emissions from operations to net zero by 2027 and look to achieve the same across the full value chain by 2040.
➤ This August, VodafoneThree will be the first to exclusively range the first phone from HMD’s Better Phone Project in the UK, with a new innovative on-device AI application called HarmBlock. This software (built by SafeToNet) means that that harmful content can’t be seen, shared, or created. The phone also features real-time location tracking, contact safe-lists, parental controls for apps and online access.
Overall, this all sounds very promising, at least in terms of network coverage and service, although it won’t be enough to placate the concerns about future consumer pricing beyond the initially protected period of 3 years. The fears of future price hikes and the gradual removal of their cheapest plans from the UK market, either directly or via MVNO providers (e.g. iD Mobile, Smarty etc.), seem unlikely to go away.
In addition, some might find VodafoneThree’s decision to name their combined network infrastructure ‘The Nation’s Network‘ a little bit too presumptuous or possibly even worthy of some cringe, although such thoughts may subside if they’re able to deliver on their coverage and performance improvements.
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Separately, VodafoneThree today announced that the south coast (Devon) town of Brixham has recently received a 30% uplift in network capacity. The hope is that this will help balance against some of the expected network load during the busy summer months, when visitor numbers tend to climb.
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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sounds like anyone who still has the £3 unlimited data sims will likely loose access to this.
It all sounds very promising but remember, its vodafone, so take it with with a giant pinch of salt.
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Why do you keep going on about “North Korean style” masts and have such a problem with 5G?
Such a weird thing to do.
North Korean poles? Grow up please
Theyre not going to be the big poles. Theyll be the boxes etc on lamp posts. The poles have limited reach for 5G/6G and they cant get planning permission for poles everywhere.
What’s this North Korea rubbish? Don’t you realise that most 5G polls as you put it you won’t even see because they are not polls they are tiny little transmitters on the side of telephone boxes and lamp posts on the side of buildings like Sainsbury’s on the High Street. 5G transmitters are disguised as trees they are tiny and they are everywhere and most people are just simply not going to see them.. I don’t know what you’re on about North Korea stuff but I can assure you most five due transmitters are not on bowls that’s a 4G thing because 5G these transmitters every so 100 feet. This really does kind of show that you don’t know what you’re talking about I’m not trying to be nasty but I think because you don’t know you really do need to take a hard look some of the rubbish that you write because that could really offend someone.
This comment was posted by someone copying the alias I use. The comment is a clear example of trolling.
@Far2329 – Just an observation, but wouldn’t the person who was using multiple Alias’s be the Troll?
@Insertfloppydischere:
I am not using multiple aliases. I have changed my alias because someone else chose to post a ridiculous comment using the same alias I have been using. Clearly, the intent was to cause reputation damage.
I am sure Mark will know who is responsible for this unhealthy behaviour.
Don’t tell me, the “North Korean” masts will have photos of our dear leader Starmer on them?
Mark, could you please look into this.
Mark, please urgently acknowledge.
I will be within my rights to hold you and ISPReview legally accountable.
These are anonymous comments, as you were well aware before posting. Nobody owns the public handles they choose to use, unless lawfully trademarked or using a real legal name (more than one person can also share the same real name, of course), and you have provided no information in public on this site that can be used to unmask your real identity (legal name). The same goes for others in anonymous comments.
In the UK, while you can generally use an alias or pseudonym, you don’t “own” it in the sense of having exclusive legal rights to it. If you wish to secure a specific username then don’t post in anonymous comments, please use our registered discussion forum instead. I have banned the use of ‘Fara82Light’ to prevent its further use, as that is the only option to prevent its use by others on this system.
@Mark:
Just to let it be known that I did not post the following comment:
“Mark, please urgently acknowledge.
I will be within my rights to hold you and ISPReview legally accountable.”
I am no longer using the alias “Fara82Light” following previous comments made by another person copying the alias I originated.
Thank you Mark.
I feel it is going to be awful, Vodarubbish signal is awful here, I don’t want my phone going onto their network. I use Smarty and it is fast enough as it is.
Conversely, I don’t want my phone going on three’s rubbish, oversold, congested network that drops calls and has full signal but no throughput network in several major cities… oh, that has severely worse coverage.
If you couldn’t tell, networks are severely different from one person to the next because of the very nature of your specific usage and location. They both have terrible customer service though. So they’ve got that going for them.
Every network varies from place to place throughout the country. Vodafone and Three are both pretty good where I am, while EE has the worst coverage and performance of all four networks at my house.
But it would be silly for me to describe EE as rubbish just because their network isn’t good where I am, when RootMetrics reports show that overall, they are the best network across the UK (with Vodafone 2nd, by the way).
If you find Smarty isn’t working well for you after Vodafone’s and Three’s networks are rationalised then common sense would say to switch to a network which does work well there, but for all anyone currently knows, the Three masts you use right now may remain in place and your service not be negatively impacted at all.
Ha, in my town three UK 3G (still on here) is faster than the LTE, three is overloaded, and Vodafone/02 not much better, EE is fastest around here by a good amount too
I think you’re missing the point, you will also be able to roam onto three’s network. It wouldn’t make sense if Vodafone forced all three customer’s onto Vodafone all at once
Three’s network isn’t being sidelined especially after the spectrum increase on B3
I don’t like any of the networks to be honest for different reasons. Vodafone because their customer service is awful and so is their signal around here, Ee because it belongs to BT, O2 because it belongs to Virgin. 3 was the best one to go with at the time, even if it was Chinese owned.
I will stay with Smarty and see how it goes.
We should have had a government owned mobile network, like I said before, and charge providers for using it, it would not be about making money then. Should have done it with Fibre as well.
@Ad47uk:
If you had a government-owned network, you would complain about the lack of privacy.
If you make choices based on bias, then you are bound to lose out.
Telford Band 3 on Three has increase 15MHz to 20Mhz just a tiny boost speed booston 4G
Same in London. Vodafone not using this 5mhz on Band 3 for long time.
Last few days almost every Three uk mast using 20mhz on band 3.
Vodafone and three now have 2 sets of band 78.
130mhz and 100 mhz. Three uk already using 100 mhz.
Hmmm “Within just two weeks, through the sharing of combined spectrum, 7 million Three UK and SMARTY customers will receive an improvement in 4G data speeds (mobile broadband) of up to 20% (average).” Two weeks, and no Vodafone mention? I take it that Three (and Smarty etc) customers are getting this quickly as it can be done remotely while on Vodafone’s side it can’t?
Also, it depends what they add. If it’s Band 3 only then the boost will be next to nothing (15MHz to 20MHz). If it’s Band 1 as well though – upto 10-15MHz from Three and 15MHz from Vodafone could be rather nice, especially if it’s coming out from Three’s masts and not Vodafone’s here!
1/3rd extra bandwidth, and a 20% performance boost makes sense to me. It won’t boost those with great signal already, but for those who only get the B20 it’ll be a decent boost
In answer to my own question – band 3 alone, which is fair enough. Have to say I’m impressed at how quickly they did it though.
@Martin – is it just me or wouldn’t those with great signal already be the ones who’d feel the most benefit from the speed boost? It’s great signal plus congestion here and while the speed boost is nominal, the network seems less likely to boot traffic onto neighbouring masts now (in which the latter in itself is an improvement in fairness).
See I’m down south where Vodafone is better than 3 in rural areas. But I just want to see that they don’t replace Vodafone’s customer service with threes rubbish
All customer service centres are outsourced to cheaper parts of the world. It is whether the understanding of the English language is understood to get a great experience. If you are lucky EE still have UK based call centres.
EE have a fantastic network and customer services to match but they cost twice as much O2 have great customer services but don’t even get me started on the network. Vodafone have some of the worst customers services going and three I don’t think they even have customer services.
” VodafoneThree has today announced a new partnership with CommunityFibre in London, bringing faster fixed FTTP broadband speeds to even more homes. This builds on existing agreements with Openreach and CityFibre.”
Vodafone selling their broadband on CF’s network? Or a rebranded CFL service? No idea if I’m being slow but what does this partnership actually mean?
They said ‘like CityFibre and Openreach’, so yes, wholesale. I’d like a date to know when I can switch from CF though so I don’t get lumbered with mid contract price rises.
“Within a few months, 27 million Vodafone and Three UK mobile customers will start to benefit from unrivalled access to roam on each other’s networks at no extra cost.”
Sounds like this will only benefit customers on the main brands and not SMARTY/VOXI etc… as no specific mention of them whereas they are specifically mentioned elsewhere.
“The Nation’s Network”… pass the sick bucket!
Indeed. I thought T-Mobile remaining itself to EE was a bad move but this is the next level of bad decisions.
The last 7 points in the plan has nothing to do with the merger.
If they enable roaming on each other networks, how are they going to handle the VoLTE incompatibility issues? If my phone roamed onto Three, I would loose voice calls (it is not supported by Three)
“The Nation’s Network” – I would expect ASA to have problems with this within five years.
> under the Vodafone brand. There will only be one converged brand for both businesses and consumers.
At least in the short term.
I still believe this merger shouldn’t have been allowed.
The asa already have an issue with the nations network tagline, apparently Vodafone said its because they are the oldest UK network
Interesting. I’m not sure what phone you’re using because I have used Google pixels for years here on 4G 5G and I’ve had voice over LTE on 3uk and now IDE mobile and it just works on three’s network
Regarding VoLTE, I assume your phone will still be connecting to Vodafone’s IMS, even if you’re roaming on Three.
Very surprised if they will be allowed to call themselves ” The Nations Network” mainly because it isn’t.
As much as I have concerns about the merger, this directly benefits me as both Three and Vodafone are the best networks in my area for coverage and speed.
Don’t know how that’s possible which is O2 shares sites with Vodafone so if Vodafone have the desk coverage in your area right now they know two also have the best coverage in your area so by your definition all free networks have the best coverage but really does put you in a good position. EE have the best coverage all round and even with these two merging it’s not even going to get them it’s such a shame that these networks are not prepared to put the money into investing.
30% uplift in Brixham still makes it virtually non-existant!
They can’t seriously be wanting to call themselves “The Nation’s Network”???? Surely not???
Three moved over to B3 20MHz here in Gloucestershire today, which is a good start but god knows how the MOCN is going to work. Vodafone is pretty solid in my experience with occasional problems on some sites with Three struggling a bit more (although they’ve definitely got much better coverage in some areas), but I think merging the sites should make a reliable network hopefully.
I’m intrigued to see how O2 is going to function with all of this as well, since we could benefit from better speeds (it has gotten a lot better lately but city centre sites still need upgrading with B8+n28).
Absolutely hilarious how they’re bringing call centres back to the UK btw when they just sold them off to Egypt…
I had the same thought at first about ‘The Nation’s Network’, but further down it says they’ll be keeping their existing brands, so I guess that’s just what they’ll be referring to the physical network as. Which Vodafone sort of does already.
In much the same way as Everything Everywhere is shortened to EE, by the media, general public and EE themselves – I’d imagine The Nation’s Network will just become TNN or even just NN.
And I’m sure some waggish commentators will make something disparaging of that (using active words is a hostage to fortune).
Nations notwork is too easy and dull
Is this merger likely to have a big impact on Lebara customers?
The impact will be the same for everyone. Everyone using Vodafone’s network can now connect to Three’s masts, and everyone using Three’s network can connect to Vodafone’s masts. This includes MVNOs.
The main issue will be in areas where one network is bad and the other is good. Customers of the good network will see a drop in performance because now it has to take on the load of the bad network.
In the future… well, this merger eliminated two cheap providers to create a better, premium provider. After 3 years when they can do whatever they want, I’d expect prices to go up, including for MVNOs like Lebara.
I wonder if both networks will uniformly support VoLTE and also 2g voice, i.e. if the device works for voice on one network it will work on the other, and not drop calls when roaming. Indeed will Three customers finally get 2g fallback soon (may need a config message to the phone/sim).
Also uniformity of esim support asap
Three has never had a 2g service (that’s where the name comes from, they started at 3g), whether 3 will roam onto Vodafone’s 2g I have no idea
Three Customers can now enjoy 2g again, a long time ago three did roam with the orange network.
We should be ashamed of our mobile network.
What are we now? About 50th in the world and a seriously bad, disjointed barely usable network…in fact it’s not a network but a tangled mess.
Will they shorten it to ‘TNN’ ? lol
EE spent more on its network in just five months than Vodafone and Three plan to spend over the next decade — and that really says it all. Even with both networks merging, they still can’t match EE’s dominance. The reality is, they don’t — and won’t — invest at the same level. EE remains in a league of its own, and no amount of consolidation is going to change that.