Yeah, a not very forward-looking branding exercise, similar to all those companies/products with a '2000' in their name from the 1990s.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Vodafone-Three Merger Approved by UK Regulator With 5G Investment Conditions
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
you're confusing Three and EE. Orange and TMobile merged to create EE. Orange and Three coexisted.
May be this means I’ll get decent signal in London.
It’s utterly absurd how crap phone reception is in the uk these days. If I need to use my iPhone reliably at home I need to hang out an upstairs window.iPad gets slightly better reception. Over the years it just gets worse and worse. Always amazed how much better reception is while travelling in the eu. Usually on Vodafone owned networks!
It’s utterly absurd how crap phone reception is in the uk these days. If I need to use my iPhone reliably at home I need to hang out an upstairs window.iPad gets slightly better reception. Over the years it just gets worse and worse. Always amazed how much better reception is while travelling in the eu. Usually on Vodafone owned networks!
Same, it's appalling. I don't know who to complain to about it. So many times it will say full 4G coverage and there isn't a single kb of data.
Definitely. Mergers only occur due to an inability for a company to grow market share. Mobile operators have a finite market share which is mature so to increase shareholder value they need to figure out a way to increase profits. Hence merger. Reduced competition means less churn so customers are less price sensitive as they've one fewer options for where else to go.
I used Verizon's service in the UK so they bounced me between 3, EE, Vodaphone and o2
Hopefully they scrap Vodaphone's service, it was far and away the worse of the four. the other three were far better
US rural cell service makes the UK's look like complete junk, there's a need for a major service investment. I ran into far more dead spots outside in London than in places in the US with a population under 100 people
Hopefully they scrap Vodaphone's service, it was far and away the worse of the four. the other three were far better
US rural cell service makes the UK's look like complete junk, there's a need for a major service investment. I ran into far more dead spots outside in London than in places in the US with a population under 100 people
Three and Orange both owned by Hutchinson (Hong Kong). The telecoms industry is very incestuous.
Likewise, although personally I find Smarty/Three’s network piss poor for internet speeds round here. If it wasn’t so cheap I’d have tried a different network. Vodafone’s was always really good round my neck of the woods but the prices were getting ridiculous even for sim-only. I’m expecting at least a full merger of Smarty and Voxi with one disappearing.
As stated There is owned by Hutchison Hong Kong, not Chinese. And Orange isn't owned by Hutchinson for a very long time.
I use Three, and I think they use EE mobile masts at the moment. There's a Voda mast about 100m from me, so if they move onto Voda infrastructure I might get a signal boost. Mind you, the consolidation in the industry is scary as a consumer.
Vodafone has to be the worst service, their website rarely ever works, if it does it gives a 'Down for Maintenance' notification 🙄 - I can't see how this is supposed to be good for the consumer, good for somebody who's pocket has just mysteriously gotten heavier... but not for the consumer!
Of course it will, done so in the past so will do so again. Less competition = bad for consumers. Thank your lucky stars that in the UK you have many choices for electricity , gas , water providers.
Have you not heard of wifi calling? lol
I believe you are correct
Has the regulator forgotten when all UK telcos promised Brexit wouldn’t result in EU roaming charges, then as soon as the deal was signed, literally every telco introduced EU roaming charges?
I’m still with Three but only because I got grandfathered into free EU roaming. I suspect this will be removed when the merger completes, and when that occurs, I’m moving to an MVNO. Three is the most incompetent company I have ever dealt with in my entire life.
I’m still with Three but only because I got grandfathered into free EU roaming. I suspect this will be removed when the merger completes, and when that occurs, I’m moving to an MVNO. Three is the most incompetent company I have ever dealt with in my entire life.
Oh the good ole waiting game whereby the Gov caves in first , nicely played by the two telcos.
Choices for water providers? No we don't! It's a monopoly. There's six companies, I think, and that's it. You move to a new house and you get the water provider that has always supplied that house. There's no choice.
And, since the pandemic and the massive rise in energy costs because of Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, most of our independent energy companies went bust and we, as taxpayers, had to spend money to keep providing energy to their customers until they were bought out. Example: Bulb went bust. Octopus Energy bought them and borrowed something like £6bn from the UK government. Our bills went up to cover that money, reclaimed from us via "standing charges". Octopus actually repaid the loan early, but our standing charges remain the same.
It's all a scam.
Anyway, onto Three & Vodafone... I've been on a Three contract since about 2016, and you can't get it anymore. I'm still on it because it gives me free data overseas, everywhere, up to 12GB a month. If I were to change contract I'd have to pay £5/day for unlimited data in the US, and £2/day in the EU. I travel a lot, and that tariff saves me about £140/year. I fear this merger will give them a chance to get rid of these old contracts and push us onto more expensive, worse for the consumer, tariffs. Why wouldn't they? There's less competition now.
Depends where you live. I can safely say 02 in London are absolutely fine, although when I went to Liverpool it wasn’t so great.
Last edited:
I'm in kent, and in Tonbridge it is so bad I couldn't even send a 1 line whatsapp message. I also had issues in London, so maybe just the locales we were in. Vodafone isn't great in Tonbridge (hello 4mbps 5g speedtest) but it's usable unlike O2. It's a capacity issue as I googled it and it was an issue in Jan of this year on the O2 forums.
Is 5G really that horrendous over there? T-Mobile has amazing 5G here in the US, and AT&T and Verizon are catching up. Plus we have solid connections in buildings too.
But what's the new company going to be called?
Please tell me it's not going to be any of....
Three (still stuck on '3G' sounds like), Vodafone (naff; 'voda' means nothing), Three-Vodafone, Vodafone-Three, or even Five (for '5G'; what happens when 6G arrives?).
All of those are REALLY BAD™ to the company naming people not reading this.
Ideas...
TV (oh no, that's taken), VT (so is that, videotape), V3 (sounds generic) ...erm...
Veeb, 3V, 3Vo, PDQ (pretty damn quick; 'sprint' used previously), <something else completely new> ??
Please tell me it's not going to be any of....
Three (still stuck on '3G' sounds like), Vodafone (naff; 'voda' means nothing), Three-Vodafone, Vodafone-Three, or even Five (for '5G'; what happens when 6G arrives?).
All of those are REALLY BAD™ to the company naming people not reading this.
Ideas...
TV (oh no, that's taken), VT (so is that, videotape), V3 (sounds generic) ...erm...
Veeb, 3V, 3Vo, PDQ (pretty damn quick; 'sprint' used previously), <something else completely new> ??
Last edited: