Today was a "historic" day for 4G in the UK. After almost 11 months of 4G monopoly by EE, two more operators, O2 and Vodafone, launched 4G services. But considering their tariffs are high and their coverage is poor, that is not what I wanted to talk about.
What drew my attention today is the announcement from Three UK, the smallest of the 4 operators and the undisputed disruptor in the otherwise stale UK market that described the terms of their 4G offering due in December this year.
I quote "..Every customer with a 4G ready device will get a 4G upgrade at no extra cost, with no need to go to a store, no need for a new contract, Sim or tariff change. The All You Can Eat data offering will still be available on 4G".
Now, that is the way to launch 4G in my opinion. Why spend millions upgrading your network to 4G only to then apply such high tariffs that nobody uses it? In today's smartphone world every operators 3G network is heavily overloaded so it makes perfect sense to me to offer 4G as an extension to someones data contract and not charge extra for it. That means you are getting a return of investment and you are also improving the customer experience on 3G by offloading data traffic from it and thus reducing churn.
