Three is to vacate its Star House head office in Maidenhead at the end of the March and has begun the search for a new headquarters in the Thames Valley area.
The UK operator has been based in the Berkshire town since its foundation nearly two decades ago. However, like at many other organisations, the impact of coronavirus has led to a re-examination of its working practices and facilities.
A large proportion of Three’s workforce has embraced flexible working during the pandemic, and it is expected that many of these patterns will continue even after lockdown restrictions and social distancing measures are eased.
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Three head office
The leases for Three’s offices in Maidenhead, Reading and London are all set to expire over the next 18 months and the company believes this is an opportunity to establish a new office structure that will facilitate these employees demands.
For an interim period, staff from the Maidenhead office will be based in Reading while a suitable location for the headquarters can be found.
“It is important that we plan for the long term and provide stability and certainty for our people and customers,” said Mark Redmond, chief people officer, at Three. “With both leases up in our Maidenhead and Reading offices in the next 18 months, we felt now was the perfect opportunity to ensure we are setting the business up for success in the future.”
“Star House has been our head office and at the heart of our business since we launched in 2003,” added CEO Robert Finnegan. ”It has served us really well and we are happy that we are committing our future to the Thames Valley area, which remains local to the majority of our people.”
Three has also confirmed that it has completed its data centre transformation programme. As part of its 5G upgrade, Three has rolled out a cloud-based core and decentralised its network so it can be served by 20 regional data centres across the UK. This means network resources can be deployed close to customers and data can be processed near the point of collection, improving performance of its 3G, 4G and 5G radio networks and reducing latency.
“Our new data centres allow us to spread the network load across the country, and bring our customers closer to their data, meaning less lag,” said Susan Buttsworth, Chief Operating Officer. “This investment will help us provide a better network experience for our customers, giving them better connectivity, every day.”
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