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iPad on Three (UK)

SayCheese

SayCheese

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 14, 2007
1,720
919
Oxfordshire, England
Hi all,

My girlfriend and I are looking to get an iPad 3 here in the UK.
Having had a look around the best deal appears to be with three.co.uk and the £99 one off cost then £29/month for 24 months giving 15Gb Data a month.

Does anyone have any experiences with three? I have heard of them and only know that a few years ago they were not regarded as being very good.
Have they changed and improved or are they still having issues?

All opinions appreciated.

Regards
 
Search the forum, there's a massive thread on Three.

The general consensus is they have the best 3G deals, coverage and speeds, but their customer service could charitably be described as ****.
 
My experience of 3 is that they have great coverage, speed and prices. I highly reccomend them. Ive been using their 15GB dongle for 3yrs and rarely had problems. CS might not be great but look at the price you are paying. If you want better service for a little more with a 3GB cap try one of the others. There is also an ongoing issue of the hotspot feature you might want to keep in mind.
 
OP-just FYI, the iPad will be locked to 3 and won't take any other SIMs.

If you're not planning on using it abroad, then there shouldn't really be an issue, but I thought I'd give you the heads up.
 
Make sure you check their coverage maps for data. I'm in Scotland and the coverage out of towns etc is garbage. Other than that they are ok.
 
Thanks all for the information. Pretty much what I had been lead to believe with regards to the customer service.

Glad to hear however that the speed is good.

Azzin said:
OP-just FYI, the iPad will be locked to 3 and won't take any other SIMs.

If you're not planning on using it abroad, then there shouldn't really be an issue, but I thought I'd give you the heads up.
Click to expand...

I am assuming however that it will still work abroad ok if I take the sim out of it and use it as a wifi only iPad?
 
I was with 3 when I had my iPad 1, I had great coverage everywhere I went, and the 3G speeds where fast(4-8mb), they out did my speeds on my iPhone 4 with O2 (2-3mb), I never had to deal with customer service as I setup in shop and never had any problems with them, so managed to avoid having to call there centres in INDIA!
 
Been with three on my iPad 2 and iPhone since October last year. The data service is excellent in my experience - loads of coverage and average speeds that are much faster than other networks (O2 and tmobile in my personal experience). The value is vastly better than other providers, and if you think you'll consume a lot of data then Three is a must. 15GB gives you huge flexibility compared to the usual 1GB data you get elsewhere.

The only thing I can't comment on is their customer service because I've never needed to use it. I have heard mixed reviews, as with any provider.

It's also an excellent way of getting a cheap iPad (£99 upfront) and spacing out the payments as well as the benefit of data as long as you're happy to pay a total of £795 (99 + 29x24) over the 2 years. This amounts to £296 on top of the iPad value (£499). 296/24 = ~£12.30 a month on data
 
Last edited:
Thanks all for the help and advice. We are going to go looking for an iPad 3 tomorrow morning.
Dangerous Theory said:
The only thing I can't comment on is their customer service because I've never needed to use it. I have heard mixed reviews, as with any provider.
Click to expand...

We are going to go and see if we can get it from Carphone Warehouse. The thinking being that if we get an issue we speak to them and they can deal with 3.

Dangerous Theory said:
It's also an excellent way of getting a cheap iPad (£99 upfront) and spacing out the payments as well as the benefit of data as long as you're happy to pay a total of £795 (99 + 29x24) over the 2 years. This amounts to £296 on top of the iPad value (£499). 296/24 = ~£12.30 a month on data
Click to expand...

That's what my calculations worked out at. I reckon that's a pretty fair price for 15Gb of data a month.
 
Three - speed

SayCheese said:
Hi all,

My girlfriend and I are looking to get an iPad 3 here in the UK.
Having had a look around the best deal appears to be with three.co.uk and the £99 one off cost then £29/month for 24 months giving 15Gb Data a month.

Does anyone have any experiences with three? I have heard of them and only know that a few years ago they were not regarded as being very good.
Have they changed and improved or are they still having issues?

All opinions appreciated.

Regards
Click to expand...

Hi,

Using the 'SpeedTest.net' app on the iPad (3rd gen) I'm getting around 5Mbps on three in the day. Have had over 10Mbps at night.
(Ipswich, UK)

My wife gets only 2meg on her iPhone 4S on Vodafone same app same location.

Bubble
 
Bubblemind said:
Hi,

Using the 'SpeedTest.net' app on the iPad (3rd gen) I'm getting around 5Mbps on three in the day. Have had over 10Mbps at night.
(Ipswich, UK)

My wife gets only 2meg on her iPhone 4S on Vodafone same app same location.

Bubble
Click to expand...

Excellent. Thanks for the info.

We went shopping at the weekend and nowhere had any in stock. Looks like we are going to have to order online.
 
I've generally had no problems with them, other than today (see the post I started in the iPad forum!). Their coverage is great, and they can't be beaten on price.

Only thing I would be wary of, and is what's caused my problem today, is Three still send billing and data warning notifications by text... knowing the iPad can't receive them, and they're not backed up by emails either. This means, unless you check the Three app on a regular basis, you won't know when you've ran out of data or when you bill has been issued...

But other than that, minor (though pretty irritating) flaw they've been okay.
 
SayCheese said:
Excellent. Thanks for the info.

We went shopping at the weekend and nowhere had any in stock. Looks like we are going to have to order online.
Click to expand...

Just to let you know, you don't even need to take out the 3 sim when abroad. 3 have international roaming disabled by default. You won't pick up any networks abroad. It will just say "No Service"
 
I get a faster connection on my iPad that I do on home ADSL... and that's with 3 bars.

I've also found that I can stream netflix with no buffering on only 1 bar. In short their signal is great. As for customer service? No idea, haven't had to deal with them. I bought my ipad on contract with 3 from the apple store so I wouldn't have to deal with them.

As far as I can tell you can use the mobile hotspot feature with it too.

And as for going abroad, 3 seem to be good about unlocking within days of starting the contract, or you can just use the toggle on cellular data to turn it off to be sure of no data roaming charges.
 
yetanotherdave said:
I get a faster connection on my iPad that I do on home ADSL... and that's with 3 bars.

I've also found that I can stream netflix with no buffering on only 1 bar. In short their signal is great. As for customer service? No idea, haven't had to deal with them. I bought my ipad on contract with 3 from the apple store so I wouldn't have to deal with them.

As far as I can tell you can use the mobile hotspot feature with it too.

And as for going abroad, 3 seem to be good about unlocking within days of starting the contract, or you can just use the toggle on cellular data to turn it off to be sure of no data roaming charges.
Click to expand...

As I said in the above post. Three has international roaming off by default on all broadband sims anyway.
 
yetanotherdave said:
I get a faster connection on my iPad that I do on home ADSL... and that's with 3 bars.

I've also found that I can stream netflix with no buffering on only 1 bar. In short their signal is great. As for customer service? No idea, haven't had to deal with them. I bought my ipad on contract with 3 from the apple store so I wouldn't have to deal with them.

As far as I can tell you can use the mobile hotspot feature with it too.

And as for going abroad, 3 seem to be good about unlocking within days of starting the contract, or you can just use the toggle on cellular data to turn it off to be sure of no data roaming charges.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware Apple stores were selling iPads on contract?
 
Primus84 said:
I wasn't aware Apple stores were selling iPads on contract?
Click to expand...

Neither was I, I was in there asking about stock availability and mentioned that one of the options I was considering was a contract on three, the sales guy said they could do that there for me, I had no idea! I thought it was PAYG only. I went back a couple of days later, and indeed, got a "on contract" ipad from the apple store. Saved me from the three sales staff.
 
Ive bought a new WiFi iPad and also recently switched my iPhone 4's Tesco mobile contract to Three's 'One plan'. The idea is that if and when needed I will use the all you can eat data and tether my iPad to my phone.

So far my experience with Threes customer service is that although they may not solve the problem, well they couldn't in my case (a bad signal issue)..they do come across very friendly and polite offering ring backs etc

The good thing is, it's a 1 month rolling contract so if the bad reception issues I'm facing at home becomes intolerable, I'll cancel.
 
yetanotherdave said:
Neither was I, I was in there asking about stock availability and mentioned that one of the options I was considering was a contract on three, the sales guy said they could do that there for me, I had no idea! I thought it was PAYG only. I went back a couple of days later, and indeed, got a "on contract" ipad from the apple store. Saved me from the three sales staff.
Click to expand...

Interesting! I wonder why they don't advertise this fact.
 
yetanotherdave said:
Neither was I, I was in there asking about stock availability and mentioned that one of the options I was considering was a contract on three, the sales guy said they could do that there for me, I had no idea! I thought it was PAYG only. I went back a couple of days later, and indeed, got a "on contract" ipad from the apple store. Saved me from the three sales staff.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware of this either.
Can I ask what contract you have got with 3? One month rolling or 24 month locked in? How much data?
 
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