Three now has more than 10 million customers after adding 900,000 new users in 2017 as data consumption on the network also increased.
Pay monthly subscribers increased by 8 per cent to 6.8 million and pay-as-you-go users rose by 14 percent to 3.3 million over the past year. Revenue was up 7 percent to £2.4 billion as Three boasted of its lowest ever handset contract churn rate of just 1.1 percent.
Three’s 4G network now covers 98.5 per cent of the UK population, up from 95 percent, and 82.2 per cent of its user base is using 4G. The average Three customer consumes 6.8GB of data – 3.5 times the average UK mobile user – and 68 percent of all data traffic is carried by the LTE network.
Three network growth
Three has always placed great importance on how customers perceive its network and proudly declared its Net Promoter score of +19 was the best of any UK network.
It attributed this partly to the success of customer loyalty app Wuntu which now was 1 million users, the expansion of the Go Roam inclusive roaming offer to 71 destinations, and the launch of Go Binge, which lets users stream certain services without using up their data allowance.
“At the same time, we have invested significant time and money in the future growth and scalability of the business,” said CEO Dave Dyson. “Our digital transformation is a programme of work that will significantly enhance customer experience, employee experience and cost efficiency. Investment in spectrum, next generation network and IT underpins the opportunity to deliver improved results over the long term.
“To deliver such a degree of strategic change whilst maintaining strong profitability is testament to the hard work and dedication of the thousands of staff across the Three UK business, and puts us in a strong position to deliver long term growth.”
Three is also diversifying. In May it completed the takeover of fixed wireless access (FWA) operator UK Broadband, which offers a wireless broadband service in Central London and Swindon under the Relish brand and launched value-focused SIM-Only Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) SMARTY.
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