Three in no rush to roll out 4G services

Three, owned by Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa, bought airwaves for superfast mobile broadband in a spectrum auction last month and has agreed to buy addition airwaves from Britain’s first 4G provider, EE.

But it is in no hurry to launch its own 4G network.

“We have the opportunity to move quite quickly with the 800Mhz spectrum that we acquired in the auction,” chief executive Dave Dyson said.

“However, realistically, I think it’s going to be towards the end of the year before you see us launch (4G) LTE as a technology.”

That will give its bigger rivals as much as a year’s headstart. EE, owned by France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, launched Britain’s first 4G network late last year, and Vodafone and Telefonica’s O2 plan to start superfast broadband in the next few months.

Mr Dyson, however, said customers were not too bothered about the underlying network technology as long as they were able to consume plenty of data on the move. Three has labelled its 3G network “ultrafast”, and it has promised not to charge more when it adds 4G to the mix.

“Our network stacks up very well,” Mr Dyson said. “Right now the latest version of 3G and the early versions of LTE are not dramatically different and I am very confident that our customers are getting the right experience.”