Winner takes it all
Mobile firm 3 has topped a survey to find the UK's best mobile broadband provider, which the firm has attributed to a ‘massive' investment programme.
According to a poll by YouGov, 3 came first in ten of its twelve mobile broadband quality criteria. Over 3,900 people were surveyed online in July, of which just over half used mobile internet using a dongle, modem stock or datacard and just under 600 were 3 users.
The survey asked 3, Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and customers with smaller providers to rate the level of service they received on 12 key points: installation of software, network coverage, getting connected, staying connected, reliability during the day and during the evening, download speeds, upload speeds, ease of use, customer services, billing and overall quality.
3 received the highest accolade from users for fastest connection speed, reliability, billing, ease of use and overall quality of service. The company was also labelled the best value for money based on customer feedback and collected the highest rating of user satisfaction.
The company attributed its success to a ‘massive' investment programme, which it says has consolidated its position as the UK's biggest 3G network. It boosted its 3G reach across the UK to cover 95 percent of the population as well as improving its data speeds and strengthening its data usage on mobile devices, as applications and multimedia features become more bandwidth-hungry.
Joe Parker, director of mobile broadband at 3 said: "It is a customer endorsement of the massive investment we have been put into our network over the past two years and the speed at which this programme is developing. The network continues to grow in reach, speed and capacity. It also shows that what customers value most when it comes to mobile broadband are reliability, speed, coverage, ease of use and great pricing."
The 3 network has grown from 7,500 sites to more than 11,400 in the past 18 months due to a network consolidation programme through MBNL. It is estimated the network will expand to 12,500 sites by the end of 2010. 3 plans to plough cash into upgrading its backhaul network to boost capacity and speeds as well as update its transmission equipment.
