Three backtracks on UK 4G plans

Faster 3G on the way insteadMobile phones News By John McCann 13 hours ago | Tell us what you think [ 1 comments ]

Tweet Here comes 4G... oh wait, its only 3G

UK mobile network Three has made a dramatic u-turn on a blog it posted on Wednesday saying that it was finalising plans to bring 4G to the UK.

The super quick 4G LTE technology has been rolled out in countries around the world including the USA and Korea, but the UK is dragging its feet when it comes to sorting it out its mobile network.

Three has gone from hero to zero in a matter of days after the initial excitement among customers over the promise of 4G quickly turned to disappointment when the carrier confirmed that it was actually just updating its 3G network this summer.

Every cloud has a silver lining

It's not all bad news though as Three's 3G upgrade will see speeds doubled to 42Mbps, thanks to the latest HSPA+ technology.

Three also confirmed that it is still working towards a LTE network and hopes that it will be the first company to offer 4G LTE internet in the UK.

The 4G network would see mobile broadband speeds rocket to a staggering 120Mbps and its arrival will open up a raft of LTE phones and tablets currently not available here in Britain.

There's still a chance that the T-Mobile and Orange partnership known as Everything Everywhere could launch its own 4G LTE network by the end of 2012, pending approval from Ofcom.

From Pocket Lint

Tags: Three, 4G, LTE, Orange, T-Mobile, phonescarouselTweetreddit!StumbleuponComment on this article  Your comments (1) Click to add a new commentgcaw

15 hours ago

1. Have I missed something here?

Three's blog post on Wednesday included these two sentences: "We’re now in the process of finalising our plans to roll out what’s being described in the USA [by T-Mobile] as 4G. But let’s be absolutely clear – this isn’t 4G as in Long Term Evolution, or LTE as it’s also known."

Where's the "dramatic u-turn" that you speak of? As far as I can see, the closest thing to a U-turn here is that they changed the title of the post to focus on 3G rather than 4G (a fact acknowledged in the comments below the post), but the content of the post hasn't changed, and always made clear that this was '4G' in a non-LTE sense.

If we really, really have to go along with the idea that tweaking a headline constitutes a U-turn, can we at least agree that there's absolutely nothing "dramatic" about that whatsoever?

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