Mark Bridge writes:
Earlier today, Three.co.uk published a blog post headlined “4G comes to Three”. But it hasn’t.
I spent most of this morning here at Mobile World Congress muttering about the blog before returning to it this afternoon. And suddenly it’s changed.
The blog post remains. The headline is completely different. Now we’re told “Three to launch leading edge 3G service”.
Just as well, really, because the news wasn’t about 4G coming to the Three UK network. It was about HSPA+ service being rolled out to Three’s UK customers. And that’s not 4G. It’s more like fast 3G. In simple terms, the technology is different.
Now, admittedly the original blog did go on to say “this isn’t 4G as in Long Term Evolution… instead it’s the leading-edge version of 3G technology”. But that doesn’t forgive the original misleading headline... and the moderator’s comment of “it’s not 4G, we weren’t trying to claim that” falls a little flat.
Particularly when the company told us last year that “we currently operate on an HSPA network, and have already started moving towards HSPA+. We don’t have any immediate plans to start referring to this technology as 4G as some others have done.”
How quickly things change.
In recent months, Three has been using its ‘unlimited’ tariffs to build a reputation as a network to trust when it comes to mobile data.
Today, I think that hard-won reputation has been somewhat dented.