Three UK talks up its 5G investment plans

The UK’s fourth MNO, Three, has given a public update on its investment priorities and plans for 5G.

Scott Bicheno

November 7, 2018

2 Min Read
Three UK talks up its 5G investment plans

The UK’s fourth MNO, Three, has given a public update on its investment priorities and plans for 5G.

The headline figure is £2 billion, which is what Three says it is committed to spend on 5G stuff. Apparently Three customers are more data-hungry than average, so it’s even more important that it drops enough cash to ensure its infrastructure can keep up. The intended message seems to be that Three is for real in the 5G era and the other UK MNOs had better watch their backs.

“We have always led on mobile data and 5G is another game-changer,” said Three CEO Dave Dyson. “Also described as wireless fibre, 5G delivers a huge increase in capacity together with ultra-low latency.  It opens up new possibilities in home broadband and industrial applications, as well as being able to support the rapid growth in mobile data usage.

“This is a major investment into the UK’s digital infrastructure. UK consumers have an insatiable appetite for data and 5G unlocks significant capability to meet that demand. We have been planning our approach to 5G for many years and we are well positioned to lead on this next generation of technology.  These investments are the latest in a series of important building blocks to deliver the best end to end data experience for our customers.”

Dyson also had some stuff to say on the matter of Huawei potentially getting a hard time from UK public bodies which you can read more about here. So where is all this wedge going to end up? Details are thin on the ground right now and it looks like the headline figure includes some investment already made. Three did offer the following highlights of its 5G investments so far.

  • Acquired the UK’s leading 5G spectrum portfolio

  • Signed an agreement for the rollout of new cell site technology to prepare major urban areas for the rollout of 5G devices, as well as enhance the 4G experience

  • Built a super high-capacity dark fibre network, which connects 20 new, energy efficient and highly secure data centres

  • Deployed a world-first – a 5G-ready, fully integrated cloud native core network in the new data centres, which at launch will have an initial capacity of 1.2TB/s, a three-fold increase from today’s capacity, and can scale further, cost effectively and quickly.

  • Rolled out carrier aggregation technology on 2,500 sites in busiest areas, improving speeds for customers

About the Author

Scott Bicheno

As the Editorial Director of Telecoms.com, Scott oversees all editorial activity on the site and also manages the Telecoms.com Intelligence arm, which focuses on analysis and bespoke content.
Scott has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over ten years. Prior to Telecoms.com Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics’. Before that Scott was a technology journalist, covering the PC and telecoms sectors from a business perspective.
Follow him @scottbicheno

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