Three UK has announced that its four million mobile broadband contract customers have doubled their monthly data usage in less than a year. Its subscribers now enjoy 1.1 GB of data each month, compared to 450 megabytes last summer, while the iPhones and premium Android smartphone users consume on average 1.5 GB per month. The UK operator offers unlimted data on all of its plans with prices on Pay As You Go and Pay Monthly starting from GBP13 (US$20) per month.
In less than a year Three’s four million contract mobile phone customers have more than doubled their monthly data use. This dramatic shift in consumer behaviour has seen the average amount of data used by contract customers each month soar to 1.1 gigabytes (GB). Average use last summer was just 450 megabytes (MB).

Three’s customers using iPhones and premium Android smartphones are already using almost 1.5GB per month. This is significantly more than the allowances of 1GB or less sold to 66% of the UK’s smartphone users on competing networks*.
Dave Dyson, chief executive officer, Three said: “With 95% of our smartphone customers using data on a daily basis, everyone is relying more than ever on their handset to do all the stuff they used to do on the internet at home or work. And there is no sign of this slowing down.

“Give consumers a combination of the right device, the right price plan and a mobile network built for the internet and you see a rapid behavioural shift. We are seeing more and more people using more and more data throughout the day.
“Price plans that remove the fear of going over a data limit enable demand to grow as consumers are free to discover just how much they can do on the move. Even I don’t understand how much data I use on a daily basis so it’s no surprise that having an all you can eat worry-free data package is proving to be so popular with our customers.”
Three offers all you can eat data on all of its tariffs with prices on Pay As You Go and Pay Monthly starting from as little as £13 per month.

Graham Baxter, chief operating officer at Three, who is responsible for Three’s network said: “Since 2008 we have invested over £1 billion in almost doubling the size of our network and boosting its capacity and quality in order to handle this data traffic explosion. Today we have an award-winning network and it’s the only network in the UK that’s built specifically for the mobile internet. We cover 98% of the UK’s population and it’s great to see that our customers are doing so much more of the things they enjoy on their smartphones.”

About Three UK

Three is a communications company focused on bringing the benefits of the internet to mobile communications. We offer attractive pricing and give our customers the widest choice of ways to stay connected. To do this we’ve built an award-winning high-speed mobile broadband network. Three UK is a member of the HWL group of companies, which include 3G operations in Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Macau and Sweden.

Three facts about Three:

- Three launched the UK's first 3G high-speed mobile network offering national coverage for calls and texts, and has more than 97.5% population coverage for mobile internet services.
- Three is the fastest growing network in the UK.
- Three took first place in 8 out of 11 categories in the most recent YouGov Tablet Survey, and took top spot for 6 out of the 7 data categories in the most recent YouGov iPhone survey. Three also came first in the most recent uSwitch Best Network awards. For more info visit www.three.co.uk/awards.