{"id":25844,"date":"2021-02-08T14:02:15","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T14:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=25844"},"modified":"2021-02-08T14:04:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T14:04:35","slug":"three-uk-pauses-4g-home-broadband-sales-in-some-areas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/02\/three-uk-pauses-4g-home-broadband-sales-in-some-areas.html","title":{"rendered":"Three UK Pauses 4G Home Broadband Sales in Some Areas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile operator Three UK<\/a> has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that new customers in “some areas<\/em>” are “temporarily<\/em>” unable to order the 4G<\/a> home broadband service via their coverage checker. Instead customers doing this will be told that it isn’t available, even if the service still works for existing users.<\/p>\n

Recently we’ve received a number of gripes from people who have found that Three’s 4G Broadband<\/a><\/strong> availability checker no longer returns a positive result for their postcode, which is despite the service previously being available to them. We were able to confirm this by checking against a batch of addresses (including our own), which were previously able to order the service.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> This issue seems to only impact 4G<\/a> broadband services, while 5G<\/a> doesn’t seem to have been hit (or at least, not noticeably).<\/div>\n

We did a little digging and our sources appeared to point the finger of blame at Three UK<\/a>’s move to tackle network congestion in certain parts of the UK (i.e. possibly a means of reducing new sign-ups while the underlying problem is resolved, which seems like a sensible approach to prevent the issue getting worse).<\/p>\n

Naturally, we put all of this to the operator, which confirmed that “some areas<\/em>” would run into this problem, but declined to say precisely how big the impact was or how long it would take to resolve.<\/p>\n

A Three spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“We carefully evaluate the capacity of our network and only sell home broadband in areas we are confident can provide the right experience for our customers.<\/p>\n

While our 4G<\/a> coverage is increasing and we are adding new technology to our network as part of our \u00a32bn+ network investment, this does mean that in some areas we may temporarily suspend sales of home broadband.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our own testing of this issue suggests that it may be quite widespread, while our sources have indicated that Three UK<\/a> will aim to gradually reintroduce most of the suspended areas back into their checker over the next couple of months. As frustrating as all of this may seem, we tend to view it as more of a positive development (i.e. protecting the service for existing customers instead of continuing to oversubscribe localised capacity).<\/p>\n

We should point out that Three UK<\/a> have been offering “unlimited<\/em>” style home broadband services via their 4G network for a lot longer than most of their rivals (others only really began doing it alongside the launch of 5G<\/a> products). Customers of such products do tend to gobble a lot more data than typical mobile-only users and Three UK’s low pricing (starting at \u00a321 per month, but often less in a sale) may have combined with that to deliver a healthy take-up.<\/p>\n