Three on target?

3G mobile phone network Three finally announced its subscriber figures today. Apparently over 155,000 Britons have signed up since the company’s launch in March. Of course Three is going to have to really go some to meet its original target of 1 million customers by the end of the year. Hazarding a guess we reckon the final figure will probably be around a quarter of that.

Still there has been good news for the company – read on to find out more

There is good news though

* Subscriber levels have rocketed since it launched its very competitive VideoTalk 500 service and started offering free (or thereabouts) handsets.
* There are better handsets on the horizon
* The new Premiership season has started which is sure to hook a few footy mad punters who want to relive their team’s goals on a video handset
* There’s anecdotal evidence that the network is starting to work properly
* The company is set to increase the type of services it offers outside of 3G areas. Currently this is only voice and text, but will soon includes sending images, web access and e-mail

And some bad news too

* It may soon have 3G competition in the UK. According to www.kewney.com/articles/030819-3g.html a second operator will have 3G services up and running in the UK by Christmas with the hot money on Vodafone.

There are apparently also rumours of Vodafone and Three coming to an arrangement to merge their two 3G networks. The pair would share an infrastructure in the same way that T-Mobile and Virgin share a GSM network. Could save both companies huge sums of money while giving 3G a major shot in the arm – sounds interesting…