As most of you probably know by now, at Three were focused on giving our customers the best mobile internet experience we possibly can.
Since we launched the UKs first solely 3G network back in 2003, weve continued to invest and improve the technology that powers our network to bring you the best data experience.
It was for that reason that last year we invested millions in upgrading our network to the next generation of 3G technology: *HSPA+.*HSPA+ currently runs on the 21Mbps technical standard, meaning people can now experience download speeds in excess of 10Mbps.
Now, once again, we are going to move the game on and bring another first to the UK market.
Were now in the process of finalising our plans to roll out whats being described in the USA* as 4G.
But lets be absolutely clear this isnt 4G as in Long Term Evolution, or LTE as its also known.
Instead its the leading-edge version of HSPA+ 3G technology called DC-HSDPA (which stands for Dual Carrier High Speed Downlink Packet Access ), and it runs on the 42Mbps technical standard. So compared to standard 21Mbps HSPA+, this dual carrier technology offers customers twice the speed potential.
DC-HSDPA will deliver huge benefits for our customers. The obvious one is speed, with massive improvements in both download and upload speed. Because the technology uses dual carrier equipment meaning it can latch onto two signals at the same time and transmit and receive double the data it will also improve capacity across the network too.
Again, for our customers, this will mean more consistent speeds especially in busy areas and at peak times of the day. As our customers use more and more data, moving to DC-HSDPA will help us create the capacity to continue to offer a great service.
In fact we already have the technology up and running as a test along a small part of the M3 corridor and south west London.
The nationwide rollout is expected to commence later this summer.
As well as continuing the 42Mbps roll out, well also be running our own Long Term Evolution (LTE) trial in the next few months to get ourselves prepared for this technology, when the spectrum needed to run it is made available.
The likelihood is that this leap is still more than a year away at the earliest. But in the meantime, well continue our ongoing network improvement programme to ensure that whatever it is you want to do via the mobile internet, we are the network to be on.
*The 42Mbps Technical Standard has been described as 4G by T-Mobile in the USA: see here for further details:*
http://t-mobile-coverage.t-mobile.com/
**15/03/12 Weve edited this post since we published it initially to make sure that the terminology we use to describe our network is up to date and consistent across all our marketing.
