Immediately after its launch in the UK in 2003, Three earned a reputation for patchy signal and unreliable service - indeed, it became something of a national in-joke, one that still pops up in casual conversations and popular culture. Of course, Three has come a long way since then - indeed, it's become one of the UK's most popular networks, and plans to gobble up one of its largest rivals, O2, creating a massive 'super-carrier' larger than any other in the country.
But Three is evidently keen to continue shaking off those lingering perceptions of a less-than-perfect service, and to help nudge things along, it's announced improvements to reliability across its network, along with a considerable boost to its mobile connection speeds.
The carrier says that its 4G LTE speeds "will increase by up to 50% nationwide as part of an ongoing rollout of additional spectrum on our network", adding that this extra spectrum will also open up more capacity, as well as bringing performance improvements:
The additional 5MHz of the 1800MHz spectrum, which is used to carry 4G on our network, has already been switched on at all of our sites in Northern England, the West Midlands, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The rest of the UK, including London, will receive access to higher speeds following completion of the rollout.
This programme is part of a drive to further improve reliability on the data network, which carried 42% of UK mobile data traffic in the year-ending March 2015.
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The deployment will also help to further improve reliability by adding some much needed capacity in congested areas.
And to further underline the assertion that its network can comfortably compare with those of its rivals, Three also points to YouGov research showing that its customers have rated it as "the UK's most reliable [network] for each of the past five quarters".
Source: Three
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