Three customer’s data use doubles

Three has witnessed the doubling of its customer’s data usage in less than a year, showing just how much people are now using their smartphones to go online.

The network has four million users on contract, and their monthly data use has increased from 450MB on average last summer, to 1.1GB; so in fact it’s more than doubled.

Of course, this usage level reflects Three’s all-you-can-eat data plans.

Indeed, Three notes that its customers using the iPhone and high-end Android smartphones such as the Galaxy S III are using around 1.5GB of data per month.

Dave Dyson, chief executive officer at Three, said: “With 95% of our smartphone customers using data on a daily basis, everyone is relying more than ever on their handset to do all the stuff they used to do on the internet at home or work. And there is no sign of this slowing down.”

He further noted: “Price plans that remove the fear of going over a data limit enable demand to grow as consumers are free to discover just how much they can do on the move. Even I don’t understand how much data I use on a daily basis so it’s no surprise that having an all you can eat worry-free data package is proving to be so popular with our customers.”

Graham Baxter, chief operating officer at Three, added: “Since 2008 we have invested over £1 billion in almost doubling the size of our network and boosting its capacity and quality in order to handle this data traffic explosion… We cover 98% of the UK’s population and it’s great to see that our customers are doing so much more of the things they enjoy on their smartphones.”

When it comes to 4G, though, Three could have a bit more of a battle to keep its network speed levels up.

While Ofcom is reserving space for a fourth operator (aside from O2, Vodafone and Everything, Everywhere), which should almost certainly be Three, other firms – both BT and TalkTalk have been mentioned – could step forward to contend for that 4G spectrum.