Three and T-Mobile have announced that they are to team up to build a combined HSDPA and 3G network to cover the majority of the country (98%). This will give T-Mobile and Three a huge advantage over the other networks, and will provide customers with better mobile internet.
This announcement follows a similar arrangement between Orange and Vodafone earlier in the year. However, Orange and Vodafone cannot agree on the value of their respective assets and this has brought a holt to the progress of their deal. T-Mobile and Three's new agreement has seen both parties agreeing fully and the network share will begin on January 1st 2008.
Sharing resources to build a bigger 3G network Three and T-Mobile are expected to cut costs by around ?2 billion and will reduce the number of phone masts by 5,000. These cost savings will hopefully be passed on to the consumer in the form of cheaper mobile broadband charges. Three and T-Mobile have been fighting over customers in the mobile broadband arena, by trying to undercut each others prices since they began selling USB modems. Three also recently brought out their Mix and Match tariffs to compete with T-Mobiles Flext deals. They will now be working together to bring the consumer a combined service.
This news does not imply that T-Mobile will be buying out Three anytime in the near future. Both networks have made it clear that this agreement is simply a share of resources.
