Vodafone dials up full control of joint venture with Three in £4.3B deal Vodafone has struck a deal to take full ownership of VodafoneThree, the mobile network formed from last year's merger of its British operations with Three, in a move designed to accelerate its UK ambitions. The £4.3 billion ($5.8 billion) agreement will see Vodafone Group buy out Three parent CK Hutchison Group's 49 percent …
And then there were(n't) Three…
So much for competition!
Although there is the irony that none of the three "physical" networks offer any good value contracts directly (and stiff you with unjustifiably excessive price rises, if you are foolish enough to sign up with them), but there are a whole host of MVNOs piggybacking on the networks who all offer very much better deals…
Competition? Waz dat den? Is it summink new?
Yes, the nimble, little(er) upstarts offering better value than the Monoliths, are a strange quirk of the modern, Telco business. I'm reminded of a huge animal relying on much smaller ones to clean their teeth, remove parasites etc. If a piggy-backer can charge me £5 a month for 1000mins/texts/5GB data, no contract, & STILL make a profit, then good for them!
Revolut UK Mobile and just about to launch Klarna UK Mobile are 2 particular demonstrations of how poor a deal Vodafone Three offer their direct customers.
https://www.klarna.com/uk/klarna-mobile_waitlist/
https://www.revolut.com/mobile-plans/
Over and above cheaper MVNO’s like Lebara.
All 3 run on Voda network.
I find that that varies massively with location, so you're likely both right. Did Schrodinger's cat have a mobile 'phone?
Certainly here in Canterbury (SE UK) the reception across all carriers was abysmal when 3G was the fastest network, the switch to 4G was a revelation, but I know people in other areas who say the exact opposite.
For those struggling in marginal areas I offer this lot:
Anywheresim
https://anywheresim.com/#mobile-you-can-rely-on
Full UK roaming across all UK networks.
(Full disclosure, I've never used them, so have no idea how good their service actually is. I stumbled across them whilst in the depths of crappy 3G implementation woe as mentioned above. Ultimately I didn't take the plunge as they only offered PAYG at the time & I prefer a contract. Possibly they do offer contracts now, but I rarely leave Canterbury these days & the 4G here is pretty much usable now so not a service I need. They did actually read e-mail enquiries, & answered them promptly & clearly.)
Allowing Mega-corporations to form & control ever greater market share, is generally not good news for the consumer. We have fewer, genuine choices: I bet some don't realise that EE/Plusnet is basically BT, even now. UK car insurance is worse: multiple brands all owned by surprisingly few insurers. Real competition is good, it keeps companies 'on their toes', to some extent.
Reminds me of the plethora of energy companies that sprung up out of nowhere in the Uk back in the late 00s/10s. All offering cheap deals and wonderful contracts, up until Covid and the subsequent ramp up of raw energy costs + interest rates + inflation, and a lot of them got found out and either went to the wall or were subsumed into the bigger players. And now we're left with the usual gang of perhaps 5 or 6, with no suggestion at all of collusion and rigging prices among themselves!
Telecoms and broadband providers are going the same way: competition becomes a joke and oligopolies become a thing, while OFCOM and CMA look the other way.
Consumers will be shafted of course, shareholders and investors will be quids in as per usual
If you want an explanation, look to the extra costs imposed on UK businesses by the central government.
The UK now has three major players, but unless they can significantly reduce their costs, the market will only be able to support two. With three players under current cost levels, they will struggle to be able to afford to keep pace with technological evolution.
As somebody who travels to UK most years and EU occasionally, and does not want to pay crazy US roaming charges, Three filled the sweet spot that I couldn't find with the other 'big boys' in that I can (for now) order an e-sim online, top it up and have my phone ready to use on landing
For some reason it seems the other players want to send a physical SIM to a UK address and then give you the option to convert it over to ESIM. Why, oh why?
Giffgaff were a reasonable compromise in that they'll send a SIM internationally (which takes time and is still clunky) but they insist on patronizing their customers with their teenage vernacular and will also nuke an unused SIM after 3 months (I think) - typically just before I need it again.
The PAYG rates are reasonable and typically £10 has covered a 1-2 week trip easily - even with EU roaming.
The cynic in me suspects that under Vodafone, the pricing will go up and the convenience will go down. I would love to be proven wrong
