Three UK Suddenly Introduces Mobile Broadband Speed Caps UPDATE
Customers of mobile network operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) were given quite the surprise yesterday afternoon after the provider suddenly notified them, without any prior warning, that they would be introducing mobile broadband (4G, 5G) speed caps of between 25Mbps and 100Mbps (Megabits per second) across various plans from the same date.
So far as we can tell from the various emails and forum posts that ISPreview has received since Sunday afternoon. New customers looking to take out most of the operator’s new Pay Monthly and Mobile Broadband plans will now be subject to a maximum speed cap of “up to” 100Mbps (in practice this will most typically reflect download performance, since uploads rarely reach that high).
By comparison, those taking out a new Pay As You Go (PAYG) plan will be capped to a speed of 25Mbps, “except in the following MBB Data cases where we offer speeds of up to 50Mbps: MBB Data Only Data packs [and] MBB Data at our Standard rates.”
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The catch with PAYG is that there isn’t a long contract involved and so the speed cap will be applied unless you keep an existing Auto-renew Data Pack active (see below). Further details can be found in the operator’s related Price Guides here, here and here (PDFs – dated from 19th April 2026).
Three’s Text Message to PAYG Customers:
“We wanted to let you know about upcoming changes to our network. From 19 April, download speeds will be capped at 50Mbps for new customers. But good news – if you keep your current Auto-renew Data Pack active, you will continue enjoying uncapped speeds.”
The message appears to be that many existing customers will be unaffected by this change, although over time such users will inevitably re-contract or upgrade and may thus still eventually become subject to the cap. But what isn’t so clear right now is why Three UK has introduced the change, although many are already speculating that it could be a negative result of last year’s merger with Vodafone (some of Voda’s mobile plans have similar caps).
Naturally this change probably won’t be something that the majority of Smartphone users will really notice, not least because mobile broadband performance can already be highly variable and doesn’t always manage to reach the level of the cap. But experiences do vary between locations and there will also be those who use their mobile data link for home broadband, which are more likely to notice.
We’ve asked VodafoneThree to comment and will report back if they respond.
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UPDATE 9:31am
We’ve received a reply from VodafoneThree, but this only confirms what we’ve reported above and ducks the question of why they’ve introduced a cap, when one didn’t exist before.
A Spokesperson for VodafoneThree told ISPreview:
“From 18th April, we are launching new speed tiers on Three’s mobile network, which will enable new and upgrading customers to choose the data speeds which best match their needs.
Pay Monthly mobile customers will have access to Everyday Speeds of up to 100Mbps – faster than the average UK mobile download speed (72Mbps* [based on the Ookla Speedtest Global Index, Dec 2025]) – allowing customers to access superfast speeds for seamless browsing, streaming and sharing. For those who want the best possible network speeds, they can choose from a flexible, monthly Full Speed Add-on or Lite+ with Full Speed Add-on included for the duration of the plan.
Pay As You Go mobile plans will offer speeds of up to 25Mbps as standard, or up to 50Mbps for those on Auto Renew Data Packs.
Mobile Broadband customers on pay monthly plans will also have access to Everyday Speed of up to 100Mbps, with the option to purchase a Full Speed Add-on. Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband plans will offer speeds of up to 50Mbps.”
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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So they are starting to align Three’s tariffs with Vodafone, they have 100Mbps caps on some of their sim only tariffs.
I wonder how long it will be before Vodafone drops the Three brand altogether?
I wonder how long it will be before Three customers drop Vodafone altogether..
Vodarubbish, what do you expect?
Not that most people will notice as been said above, certainly not on a phone.
I get about 250Mb/s on 5G using smarty, but since 5G is unreliable i normally keep my phone on 4G, so around 60Mb/s.
I don’t know if Smarty will cap the speeds since they are part of Vodarubbish now.
Not really bothered, most of the time the phone is on Wi-Fi and I don’t do anything on it to warrant super duper speeds, nor do most people I doubt.
Just tested my vodafone, I get 460Mb/s on 5g
@guesticles, you know doubt pay a fair bit more than I do and I was fine with 3G, it was more reliable than 4G and certainly far more reliable than the 5G rubbish.
And so the downfall begins
Will this affect MVNOs using the 3 network too?
It’s possible, but MVNO’s, even those owned by the same primary operator, like to offer something different and will have agreements structured around that. So time will tell, but for now I suspect there won’t be any identical changes.
This is the sort of thing as to why I hate when I have temporarily been forced to temporarily rely on 4G/5G for home broadband. It’s just so variable in speed, fickle policy changes and often double NAT. Keep the limited radio bandwidth for things that actually need to move.
But won’t this mean home broadband customers suffer too
Just looked on the three sim only deals page. Who in their right mind would go for them now.. over £30 a month for uncapped speeds. RIP Three… Vodafone has killed them.
I’m wondering about that also. No message from them so far, and speeds are as usual.
Does this affect the SIMs (re)sold by Scancom?
Yes. I have a pre paid data sim and it’s gone from about 110mbps to 50. I also have 2 Scancom Business sims that have both gone from 80mbps to about 5. I recently went on a business trip to Cornwall and it was just as bad there as it is at home
I am in the last 2 months of my Business sims thank god. So I know I won’t be staying
Odd. In terms of current ones on sale, it states not affected by this capping. They are usually business SIMS, not consumer. If you pre-paid upfront like these SIMS, you’ve technically paid for the service as sold which is uncapped. If they can change the service, I’d expect notice of 30 days.
VodafoneThree
Vodafone holds 51%
Three holds 49%
Most of the VodafoneThree Board is Vodafone Execs. Of the 12 people, 9 were ex-Vodafone
so inevitably, Three will eventually disappear, in all, but name
As predicted, the meddling has !started! to eventually water down to a mediocre offering costing lots more.
Aren’t they wonderful a quango, the CMA for greenlighting the take-over, like all the others unelected and ineffectual.
This is to being it inline fo which Vodafone has already in place.
ive still got a few of those £3 MBB unlimited sims from three business.
Wonder when they will start meddling with them, having said that for £3 I won’t be complaining as they dont get anywhere near 100mbps in the first place.
I’m fairly confident my connection has been quietly capped since December. One morning the bandwidth simply collapsed — from a consistent 180 Mbps down / 40 Mbps up during off‑peak hours to a generous 60 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up at 03:00. A remarkable achievement, considering nothing else changed except the speed.
There’s been plenty of remote tinkering on the local sites, though no actual upgrades. Even the 5G SA map update that briefly appeared in the three‑month planning data seems to have realised its mistake and left. Sensible of it.
Of course, this would all be thrilling if the end result resembled an improvement. Instead, it feels suspiciously like the same faux‑5G already offered through the three site — only less convincing. Vodafone’s coverage here relies on a single overstretched mast juggling B1, B20, B8 and N1 across an area that really deserves better, supported by a few B20‑only sites that appear to be participating out of politeness or embarrassment. Without N78, the whole exercise is essentially cosmetic. I am fed up of being shown the same turd rolled in glitter.
Meanwhile, the advertised 4G speeds remain higher than this anticipated “5G SA”, which is conveniently restricted to top‑tier plans anyway. A lovely touch of exclusivity.
For those of us in new builds with no FTTP and unusable FTTC, relying entirely on 4G/5G for basic connectivity, the situation is not just inconvenient. It’s exhausting in a very predictable way.
So the first benefit of both network merge has just landed! Not that I need more than 50Mbps on my mobile.
I very much doubt anyone actually *needs* more than 50Mbps on a mobile device. Just like symmetrical upload speeds, it’s a “nice to have/boast about” and not an actual requirement.
Well, I need symmetric speed on broadband. Same as I need static IPv4.
You don’t speak for everyone Ed. FTTP with symmetric is a requirement for my house along with other distance family members. Why pay more to a dinosaur incumbent for asymmetric, if you have possibility of a modern provider using at least XGS-PON and offering symmetric. The only plus is number of engineers to fix outages, but if you have 4G/5G failover that is not so critical. It’s not enough to make me want legacy GPON and asymmetric.
I wanted to add some possible context here because I think this move might be non-sinister. I have always suffered from really bad upload throughput on Three but really good download rates. I believe they might be trying to control the amount of upstream bandwidth being used by TCP ACK’s because if you sit close to the mast, you can get in excess of 1gbit/s download speed and due to the way TCP/IP was designed, with TCP you have to send what’s called an acknowledgement (ACK) data for every piece of data you receive to inform the network that you received the data. Now in excess of 1GBit/s speeds, this upstream data rate can be in excess of 10Mbit/s which not a lot of people can even get even that throughput uploading their cat photos. The ACK system works in reverse too, meaning for every piece of data you upload, the network has to send you an ACK too. With people starting to download and upload at high rates, one can assume that all this ACK data will build up with the millions of customers on the network. So it’s possible that they are trying to cap the throughput to control the amount of waste with these ACK’s. Note that UDP (most gaming and Quic) connections don’t have this overhead at all so they wouldn’t target these people. What do people think about this?
It’s a good way to reframe the situation but what you have had is the same as many, where masts have get oversubscribed with no plan for enriching the site to better serve the base or to expand and have more sites. Then retail hammering unlimited data sales with all of those sims that need data provisioning if they are used or not also, realistically most of them could have been 4gb allowance and driven sales volume without stretching capacity further. If they had better traffic shaping in the first place then you would not have had such an asymmetric experience to begin with. I fully appreciate that tiers will in the long run help with traffic management and end experience but they should have charged more, spent some more etc to already be tiered levels as another aid for traffic shaping on a congested network. As a customer with no other options I really hope that the decline will stop and everything improves from now on, but I have to agree with Stephen Wakeman that this is more enshittification that we are witness to
Well somewhere in Greater Manchester, I get 870 Mbps down, 96 Mbps up with latency of 18ms unloaded 98ms loaded. That’s on a SMARTY sim on Three, but my own Three phone shows ridiculous speeds with line of sight of the transmitter.
Based on my own experience of optimal 5G conditions, I’d say that the network can let you do those speeds. I did notice the speed drop to 200 Mbps when the APN was set wrong though.
I hate to be That Guy, but that’s not how TCP works. Windowing has been a thing for at least 30 years.
completely wrong understanding of TCP/IP ACK. There’s a sliding window. Not every single packet requires an ACK.
AHH, enshittification at work. How lovely.
Nice as well how for the price you previously got uncapped is now capped and you have to pay more for the previous level of service.
It’s almost as if such decisions are made purely out of greed and avarice, not because they’re necessary or difficult. Almost.
This is not “enshittification at work”. Enshittification is not a synonym for “becoming sh-t”. It’s a process by which businesses make their end consumer product worse in order to favour their business partners, and then make their product worse for business partners to enrich themselves. See for example Amazon making search bad so that you end up seeing lots of sponsored Amazon Marketplace products, then raising the fees for Amazon Marketplace sellers so that they have to pay in order to be visible on the site. Or Facebook making it so that you don’t see your friends and family’s posts on your feed but rather a bunch of video content from business partners, then Facebook change their algorithm and screw over all the businesses that pivoted to video
The term doesn’t apply herr
ThroDaFone
All these people complaining who probably do nothing but scroll socials and forums using <1mbps on a good day.
The caps will impact less than 1% of users if you’re lucky. I can gauge 90% or more don’t even know what speed they can achieve as long as they can post, text or call.
It would be great if that was all I used the connection for, however, for me 5g/lte is my primary connection for everything and I am out of other options so it is maddening for things to only ever get worse, the real kick in the groin is looking out the window 3 meters away to those with their swanky fttp
So if it is about 1% of users, why doing it at all?
Because that 1% of users has a significantly greater than 1% impact on the network infrastructure and cost, and impact the service offered to others. If you ever thought this was sustainable post merger you are delusional, the cost saving benefits were explictly outlined in the merger proposal.
@bringback
So get Starlink for £35 a month and enjoy real speeds..
YOu do have another option.
Fund Muskie? No thanks!
Bit hard to lug around a startlink attached to my phone too. Remember, a phone can be used for tethering, handy if out and about with laptop and phone.
Basically the same as EE then, lower tiers get a 10Mbps, the second tier gets 100Mbps, Top tiers get unlimited speeds which EE cheekily call 5G+.
I was going to jump from EE to Vodafone 3, but I won’t now.
5G+ is EE’s marketing term for standalone 5G. For some reason they gatekeep that on their higher plans rather than allowing any compatible device to use it.
Of course they do BT Ivor. It’s BT after all, got to keep the shareholders loaded.
That’s why its essential for competition, to remove these cartel barriers.
Jump to Spusu, in my place I am getting +100Mbps. In London KingsX I’ve seen ~700/100
I’ve just checked with ID Mobile, who said it won’t affect their network.
Note that ID Mobile doesn’t have ” their network”. They use Three and can only use what Three allows them to.
For now they don’t have speed caps or different priorities because their contract with Three doesn’t have that, so yes, it’s a good alternative. But ID Mobile doesn’t dictate terms when the contract has to be renewed or has a saying on how VodaThree runs their network.
Will this affect Smarty? If it doesn’t then surely that will be the best value way of getting VodaThree’s signal?
Not yet. Still no speed caps or different priorities.
Am I allowed to leave Three after this sudden change? Like would I be allowed to leave my contract for free?
The change will be for customers recontracting or new customers. It will not apply to those within their minimum term.
You would only have the right to leave within 30 days if they were imposing a change on an existing contract within the minimum term.
This move by Three should be no suprise at all as Three is an outlier in offering unlimited data plans with no UK fair‑use cap. Its advertising is “No data caps. Just endless streaming, browsing, and sharing in the UK with our unlimited data plans.” However this couldn’t last and with Vodafone in charge of the combined VodafoneThree company, it’s clear to me that Vodafone has brought Three into line with speed‑tiering being the new norm not just in the UK but following what’s being done in Europe.
Three has a fair use policy of 600GB per month on unlimited plans and business plans often have 1000GB per month.
So we already seeing the affect of reduced competition, didnt take long.
Vodafone owns 51% and is in control. They’re doing what they’ve always done. No surprises here.
We allowed – and some even cheered for it – for a company that isn’t very competitive or that customer friendly to have a massive chunk of spectrum, shutting any new competitor off from our market. We knew that Three, even if not the best network, was the cheap alternative which kept others in check until a certain point.
Now we all get to enjoy the consequences of “our” decisions.
I have made a complaint to ofcom and the CMA.
This merger is already starting to negatively affect customers.
You will be wasting your time! Ofcom and the CMA won’t not care and will do NOTHING!
Correct. The merger is done so nothing to do with the CMA, no promises on not to do this as part of it, and changing the products for new customers nothing to do with Ofcom. They can’t force mobile networks to sell a particular set of products.
ofcom, CMA ? when will people realise its ALL a facade?
Even more confusing, Unlimited Lite+ has no speed limits, Unlimited Complete has a cap of 100Mbps
I haven’t received any email or text for my SIM only lines, even the one out of contract
My Smarty speeds in my 5G router seem much slower this afternoon. I normally get around 400-500 MBPS just done a speed test and I’m getting 74 MBPS I’m on a 5G connection as well..
The merger should never have been allowed to happen
Not just because it was a stale brand taking charge of a challenger brand, this eroding competition… But Vodafone were always going to leverage Three customers for more money to return value to their shareholders
I’ve been with Three since the beginning, with a ridiculous NEC 3G video phone
I won’t be staying in this new corporation… Unfortunately that means going to another corporate behemoth, but I will be voting with my wallet
Challenger brand that was incorporated 23 years ago, right.
I still have that phone in a draw!
Had the camera you could move 180 degrees. Got it when they did free video calls three-three Xmas 2003. I was also with Three from the 4th of March 2003 (day after they launched) and I even remember having a video call with a CS rep!
Oh how times have changed.
Not sure if this has been covered in another article but Klarna (the buy now pay later app) is offering an unlimited data 5G esim package, 20GB roaming and unlimited calls and text on the Vodafone network at £15 a month. This was announced but not available to purchase right now. I assume they would have a speed cap built in the plans but not sure and it doesnt specify which countries are included in the roaming.. hopefully its EU but it could be USA (like Revolut who also use Vodafone network)
I think I’d probably take a different view to most. Three made a good go of mobile broadband / fixed wireless when they were independent, since they had no other way to go up against the other MNOs who all own, or are owned by, major fixed line ISPs.
But now Vodafone are calling the shots and they want people on fibre, preferably theirs, whenever possible. 50 or 100Mbps is still more than enough to get things done for lighter and portable users. They will likely feel that people who rinse the local cell site 24/7 should not be doing so.
“which will enable new and upgrading customers to choose the data speeds which best match their needs”
One way of phrasing it. Absolute baloney.
Like others who have commented, I also rely on Three 5G mobile broadband for me entire internet connection while people on the opposite side of my central London street enjoy their gigabit FTTP connections. I also need static IPv4. Three mobile broadband has done me proud for this for the last five years or so, and – so far at least – I haven’t noticed any speed drops particularly.
The only thing I’m confused about is who this actually affects. I have been out of contract for a while but am happy to just keep rolling on for now in the hope that Openreach actually mean it when they say “building in your area this year”. But since I’m not a new customer, and don’t plan on re-contracting with Three, might I escape being capped… maybe??
I imagine at some point they’ll give you 30 days notice that they’re putting you on a speed cap, but perhaps you’ll get away with it if they don’t want to risk losing lucrative out of contract customers.
Is this linked to the latest saving power article Lower speed = reduced energy needed?
No, it’s more about aligning with the approach that Vodafone already take.
Fair enough. I read after I posted about the alignment. It’s still pants though!
They are quick to increase our bills £1.50 extra on my sim plan yet trying to cut cost to maximum shareholders profits greed nevertheless same with energy companies supermarkets and trains fares.
My main unlimited business SIM is now topping out at 100mbps, but seemingly after 7am. I’ve been away since this announcement, so have only had chance to test today. I ran a speedtest around 6.30am and achieved 960mbps, ran it again at 7.15am and got 91mbps.
Testing a scancom SIM in the same location still reaches decent speeds. Nothing has changed in my setup and I’m still connected to the same cell on the same mast. I’ll call three business later and see whether they’ll admit to capping an existing customer. I only recently signed up for 24 months due to the scancom SIM providing decent service for the best part of a year, I just needed rid of the 1TB cap.
Energy cost lol please purchase an add-on for unlimited speeds they are just milking customers for more profits.
I knew this would happen when vodafone took over. Three never had tiers, vodafone had their max tier, 100mbit tier etc etc. This is just stage 1. Stage 2 is completely killing off the three brand entirely, and giving everyone a crap CGNAT IP
Oh no it’s already starting! a once really competitive option is basically now Vodafone 2.0 I reckon it will be like this for a year or two then they’ll probably just shut down the three brand all together and move everyone to Vodafone or voxi….
“Pay Monthly mobile customers will have access to Everyday Speeds of up to 100Mbps – faster than the average UK mobile download speed (72Mbps* [based on the Ookla Speedtest Global Index, Dec 2025]) ”
And now we’re doing our bit to get that average down.
Walked past the EE shop in town today offering £12 for an unlimited plan.
VodafoneTHREE has far to go, in adding new masts to the network, currently I suspect has happened, is reducing the connection to one mast (rather than two separate masts, one for THREE and one for Vodafone customers) during the murged period. So masts are getting more busy, as the new mast investment hasn’t occurred. I still have lots of THREE not spots, even where coverage should be good.
Further I have sent Vodafone a letter(first by email and then by Royal Mail), of local best places for masts…no reply though!
Vodafone has promised a massive investment…
There is NO technical reason for this, there is oodles of bandwidth on 5G, except maybe at football matches or major events.
This is just a gouging marketing ploy to get customers to pay more for the service they signed up for.
Particularly pernicious is the stay on our price escalator and we won’t cut your speed.
When 4G speeds operate faster than 5G we are literally going backwards.
I used to receive upwards of 850mbps from my home. The mast isn’t that far away. Now we only receive around 550/600mbps which I am still happy about. The thing for me and my wife is our contract ran out in 2021 and we are paying £25 a month. I can get a new contract at £15 with speeds up to 100Mbs but I fear we take the new deal for £10 cheaper and the speed drops. We were happy to allow the bill to rise to around £30 per month then look at a new deal. EE in my area isn’t great, they give speeds of around 300mbps for £23 a month.