Three UK has been accused of profiteering from its planned merger with Vodafone after it paid its Hong Kong-listed owner, CK Hutchinson £2 billion.

According to trade union Unite, the dividend paid to CK Hutchinson, which is a conglomerate of the billionaire Li Ka-Shing owned by Three, is highly profitable as an independent business and could remain sustainable without merging.

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If UK regulators approve the merger, the main competition will be among Virgin Media O2, EE/BT, and Vodafone/Three.

Hutchison 3G claimed the one-time dividend payment followed the £10 billion sale to Cellnex of mobile phone masts across Europe, which included 6,600 UK assets.

However, the deal has been branded as a “clear attack on consumers” by Unite, which claims the dividend payment, shown in the company’s latest accounts, was made months before Three increased some of its contract prices by 14%.

Unite executive head of operations Sarah Carpenter said: “The siphoning of record dividends from Three while crying ‘failing firm’ to push through the harmful Vodafone merger is nothing short of cynical exploitation.

“This deal is a clear attack on consumers, threatening a staggering £300 hike in yearly mobile bills and putting 1,600 jobs on the line while making hollow promises about future investments.”

Carpenter added: “On top of that, entrusting vital blue light contracts to a Chinese state-influenced company raises alarming national security concerns. Unite continues to stand firm against this merger, fighting to protect the interests of workers, consumers, and the broader public.”

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Britain’s biggest mobile phone network providers are facing a class action claim that their loyalty customers are being overcharged.

According to consumer rights champion and former Citizen’s Advice executive, Justin Gutmann, Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three are “abusing their dominant positions” in the UK mobile industry by charging a ‘loyalty penalty,’ in which long-standing customers were overcharged for handsets beyond the end of their contractual term.

Gutmann alleged the mobile operators have overcharged on up to 28.2 million contracts and, as a result, is seeking damages of at least £3.285 billion.

If successful, someone who held a contract with just one of the mobile operators could receive as much as £1,823.

Gutmann said: “I’m launching this class action because I believe these four mobile phone companies have systematically exploited millions of loyal customers across the UK through loyalty penalties – taking over £3 billion out of the pockets of hard-working people and their families.

“These companies kept taking advantage of customers despite the financial crisis of 2008, Covid and now the cost of living crisis. It’s time they were held to account.”

He added: “If our claim is successful, it will finally stop these firms from taking advantage of their loyal customers and stop the immoral practice of loyalty penalties.”

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The ‘Lingo Bingo’ game, which is part of a larger integrated campaign, aims to reward the common mobile behaviour of ‘second screening’ by asking viewers play a spot of bingo on their mobile devices while watching the show.

“This exciting new partnership with Three is TV sponsorship at its best,” said Rupinder Downie, Brand Partnerships Leader at Channel 4. “The innovative and creative cross platform campaign aligns the brand with one of Channel 4’s most popular and much-loved shows across linear, digital and social and we look forward to playing Lingo Bingo on Friday nights.”

Throughout the series, viewers will be asked to choose and comment three words or phrases from a bingo card posted on Three’s social pages with the hashtag #ThreeLingoBingo. These three selections will be based on the words or phrases viewers predict will be said on the show. Once a viewer’s three words or phrases have been said, they will be automatically entered into a draw for the chance to win prizes such as a Samsung Galaxy S21, Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, and cash prizes.

The social media game will run across Three UK’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages. It will kick-off this evening (26 February) during the latest episode of Gogglebox.

Three’s wider campaign includes a Gogglebox hub on the Three Website, Gogglebox running across retail AV, idents, and live tweeting throughout the show each week.

“Gogglebox is one of the UK’s most loved shows, and we know how excited everyone is to watch the new series, particularly as much of the UK remains in lockdown,” said Aislinn O’Connor, Director of Marketing for UK and Ireland at Three. “The partnership began at the start of the year and has provided a great opportunity to drive positive brand association with a mainstream audience. We can’t wait to showcase our new idents for the first time this Friday – which looks at playful insights around TV viewing and phone behaviour – as we believe that it perfectly complements the Gogglebox tone.”

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SAP adds Bendiek to Executive Board
Sabine Bendiek has been appointed to join the SAP Executive Board as Chief of People Officer and Labour Director. Starting in early 2021, she will lead the Human Resources organization and people strategy for SAP. This includes attracting the best talent in the industry, providing a growth and learning environment for employees, and ensuring a consistent leadership culture to enable inclusion, accountability and agility.

Bendiek is currently Microsoft Germany Management Board Chairwoman. At Microsoft, she oversaw an increase in cloud growth of 50 per cent in 2020. She also drove the move of the business to the cloud, which significantly contributed to Microsofts strong position in Germany. Prior to Microsoft, she held various roles at companies including Nixdorf, Siemens Nixdorf, McKinsey, Earlybird Venture Capital, Dell, and EMC. Bendiek is a member of the supervisory board at Schaeffler.

“SAP is recognized throughout the industry as a growth company and its people are crucial to its ongoing success,” said Bendiek. “In any successful organization, business growth and the people strategy must work hand in hand. I thank the SAP Supervisory Board and Executive Board for putting their full trust in me to lead the people and operations functions that are the heart of SAPs ongoing transformation.”

Tomlinson added to team at Three
Mobile network Three UK has hired Mike Tomlinson as its Managing Director of Business. In the newly created role, he will develop Three’s B2B presence in the UK, building on its SME offer announced in 2019 and its established private networks division.

Tomlinson has a wealth of experience in the telecoms industry, having previously held roles at EE, Virgin, and BT. Most recently, he advised tech and telecoms firms on the broader B2B market.

“I’m delighted to be joining Three and I’m excited by the opportunity to scale our growing business division,” said Tomlinson. “Businesses of all sizes need a resilient network partner and the major technology investments that the company is making make Three the perfect choice.”

Alongside Tomlinson’s arrival, John Dunican has taken on an expanded role of director of MVNO and Carrier Services for Three UK Ireland, having been Head of Wholesale at Three Ireland since January 2017.

MMA selects Griesser to direct Germany
Katja Griesser has been named as the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) Germany Country Director. She follows Daniel Rieber, who initiated the chapter together with Chairman Mark Wächter in 2016.

Griesser is a marketing and media expert with 16 years of industry experience. She started her professional career with Sky Deutschland being responsible for Marketing Partnerships along with international e-commerce projects. In 2009, Griesser joined Telefónica Germany as General Manager for netzclub.net. Later, she was promoted to Global Head of Sponsored Data, becoming responsible for developing all sponsored mobile products in Europe and Latin America.

“Mobile Marketing has become increasingly dynamic and complex and it’s hard to be on top of every digital discipline,” commented Griesser. “The MMA is the platform which unites the most influential and relevant brands, marketing professionals, and tech providers globally, who exchange their insights and know-how. This helps the members significantly to make fact-based and better decisions on important marketing questions.”

Green takes up senior marketing role at Teespring
Social commerce platform Teespring has chosen Les Green as its Vice President of Marketing. He will use his expertise to continue the company’s development as a leading platform which empowers and enables creators to develop their personal brands and engage with their fans.

Green moves to Teespring from his previous roles as Nike Africa’s Marketing Director, and Global Brand Director for Nike Sportswear. His time at Nike also saw him relaunch Nike’s customisation service, Nike By You (formerly NikeiD), as Senior Marketing Director.

“The future of commerce will be social,” said Green. “We already see that content and culture have moved to being primarily driven by social media so it’s inevitable that commerce will follow suit. I am excited to move to a company unrivalled in the space – where any relevant creator can scale their influence in almost any arena and reap more of the benefits by connecting directly to their fans.”

Criteo names Glickman as CFO
Sarah Glickman has joined internet advertising company Criteo as Chief Financial Officer. She will serve as both Criteos principal financial officer and principal accounting officer, and will replace Dave Anderson, who served as interim Chief Financial Officer for four months.

Glickman brings 30 years of global finance and transformation experience to Criteo. She most recently served as Acting Chief Financial Officer for 20 months at XPO Logistics. There, she oversaw the execution of a comprehensive restructuring program, expanded global shared services, and optimised finance processes and systems. Before that, she held operational Chief Financial Officer roles at Novartis and Honeywell International.

“Its an exciting time to join Criteo. I have immense respect for everything Criteo has been able to achieve as a global leader in advertising technology,” said Glickman. “I look forward to working alongside this talented leadership team to continue to grow and transform the business.”

Qian takes charge of Kwalee’s business dev in China
Mobile game publisher Kwalee has selected Penny Qian as the Head of Business Development in its new China-based office. Her experience includes roles at AppLift, Tencent, and Applovin.

Qian, and the Beijing office, will work alongside Kwalee’s existing team in the UK and India. The focus of Kwalee China will be on business development, marketing, and third-party publishing.

“Having worked in the games industry for over three years, primarily within mobile, I’ve long been an admirer of Kwalee and their amazing growth in the hypercasual space,” said Qian. “When the opportunity arose to be a part of this success story and to help the business really grow in China, I couldn’t turn it down. I’m looking forward to using what I know and my connections to really help grow Kwalee in China, and can’t wait to see the great games that come out of this as a result.”

iRobot opts for Smith as CMO
Kiran Smith has taken up the role of Chief Marketing Officer at iRobot, the robotics company behind the famous Roomba vacuum. She will help guide iRobot through an exciting period of growth and transformation as they look to evolve the brand to be synonymous with seamless, personalised digital experiences, and develop a more personal relationship with consumers.

Smith was most recently CEO of Arnold Worldwide. Before Arnold, she held several brand marketing leadership roles at Brookstone, Stride Rite, and two of the largest supermarket chains in the US. Earlier in her career, she held leadership positions at Accenture and Alliance Consulting Group.

West to lead development at Access
Access, an integrated marketing and digital agency, has hired Mark West as its Head of Development.

West leaves CTi Digital after seven years, where he held senior positions including Head of Drupal, Head of Support and Digital Consultant. Before this, he was a lead Drupal developer at TalkTalk and web executive at Carphone Warehouse.

“I am looking forward to this exciting new challenge and the opportunity to nurture the burgeoning development team here at Access,” said West. “Im keen to bring my experience of production practices and processes into the agency, to ensure we continue to offer agile, high quality delivery as we grow to meet ever-increasing client demands.”

Fingerpaint elevates Bartolomeo and O’Malley
Nick Bartolomeo has been promoted to Head of Media and Performance Marketing, and Bryan O’Malley lifted to Head of Technology and Performance Innovation, at Fingerpaint, a health and wellness-focused marketing agency.

The pair will co-lead the newly formed Shift Performance Center of Excellence, which will focus on driving brand performance through a proprietary mix of big data, best-in-class technologies, and highly skilled industry experts. Bartolomeo and O’Malley will be responsible for promoting and expanding the capabilities of Shift Performance, as well as continuing to cultivate the team and its expertise.

“I am looking forward to working alongside Bryan to drive the vision for Fingerpaint’s Shift Performance Center of Excellence and build upon the proven success we’ve demonstrated for nearly five years,” said Bartolomeo.

“We’re bringing together the best of human expertise and cutting-edge technologies to address our client’s toughest business challenges,” O’Malley added. “I’m excited to be co-leading Fingerpaint’s Shift Performance Center of Excellence with Nick.”

Mitra arrives to lead client servicing at Blink
Full-service digital agency Blink Digital has named Ratnapriya Mitra as its Vice President of Client Services. She will oversee fulfilment of client goals and over success of the client portfolio at the agency.

Mitra is a practiced marketing professional with over 15 years of experience at companies such as the McCann Worldwide group, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, J. Walter Thompson, and others.

“I’m enthused to join a team of such talented and hardworking people,” said Mitra. “Knowing that this is the team behind so many award-winning campaigns is a testimony to Blink’s dexterity that drives such meaningful work for our clients. I’m looking forward to driving more novel, creative solutions while ensuring we are at our efficient best.”

CHS welcomes four new faces
Communications and content agency CHS has recently appointed a flurry of new hires. It has enlisted Jessica Wicks as its Marketing Manager & Content Producer. Sophia Wareham, formerly of Beep! Digital, joins as a Senior Creative. Hannah Kent joins as a Junior Creative, and Kirsty Haville has joined as a Photographic Stylist, previously Creative Coup.

The post Movers and Shakers: SAP, Three, MMA, Teespring, Criteo, Kwalee, and more appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The activation was powered by a combination of lighting effects, image projection, spatial audio, haptics, and artificial intelligence to reflect the in-game situation in real-time in the room around the player, transporting players into the fantasy without having to pop on a headset.

The first person to try the experience was Liverpool and England footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. It was also visited by British hip-hop duo Krept & Konan during its run at Three’s flagship Oxford Street store in London.

Tyrone Stewart: How did this activation come about?
Haran Ramachandran: The activation is all based around 5G, so the makers, Activision, came to us because we have the best 5G in terms of spectrum holdings. We’ve got the most 5G juice for that sort of activity and we wanted to talk about how we could showcase their game through 5G in the best possible way.

We talked about just doing livestreams and that sort of thing to showcase the muscularity of 5G but that felt a bit basic. We agreed that we’d much rather focus on the home entertainment angle and how 5G might revolutionise home entertainment, regardless of what content is on the screen. Gaming is the perfect use case for it, because gamers get it, but it could’ve easily have been Stranger Things or a Premier League match. The technology stays the same, it’s all driven through 5G and the room reacts to what you’re seeing.

The premise of it with Activision started as, when you’re playing the game at home, the game communicates with your controller. It rumbles every now and then. What if the game communicates with the whole room? The whole room is a rumble pack basically. And that’s where we started.

The spatial audio and the haptics and the lights are all being triggered off of the one 5G hub that’s in the corner of the room pulling it all together.

Where it goes from here, we’d like to sell this next year and actually say ‘this is a package you can buy from Three, along with the 5G home products, and you can actually put this in your house’ – that’s what most people who tried the experience said they wanted. We had Krept & Konan come in and they were both like ‘I need this in my house’. That’s the reaction that we want to create because we think this is a great way to bring to life what 5G can do for you. Human beings are quite tactile – this thing has come along that most people are talking about and it costs more money, why should you buy it? Why is it interesting? This is the way that we’re trying to show it, it’s to land it in things that people understand and care about like gaming.

TS: If you were to market this to the consumer, would I need a bank loan to afford it?
HR: The stuff we have in the prototype experience is all industrial grade hardware and lighting. It wouldn’t be a case of having to remortgage your house to have it. What we need to do for the next phase is to move from the prototype to thinking ‘what’s the off the shelf version of this’ and talking to suppliers. We’ve got people from Philips, Samsung, Google coming through to try it, then the next phase is getting into conversations and think about how we actually build this, then talk to Activision about getting the metadata from the game to actually trigger this – because we had to write the software ourselves for that with audio triggers and visual triggers. I’d love to have it to work the same as a rumble pack works, so that it’s programmed to work in sync with the game, but that would be the next phase.

TS: Would this have been even a slight possibility with 4G?
HR: Understandably, a lot of people have asked that. It’s just not chunky enough. It’s the latency thing. Speed is table stakes when it comes to something like this, everybody already has fast broadband, so speed is only one part of it. It’s the latency and the speed to be able to know where all the hardware is in that one experience. The audio communicating with the lighting and communicating with the haptics in sync, in a millisecond, is not possible without 5G.

TS: You mentioned you could’ve done this with Stranger Things or pretty much anything else, is there a chance we’re going to see those things eventually?
HR: The likes of Netflix and Amazon are already partners of ours and we’re talking to those guys, so the next phase is to get all of those people through this and say ‘we feel this is the potential for 5G and home entertainment, what do you say? Can we think about getting into bed together next year?’. We could work on a Premier League game with Amazon or Stranger Things with Netflix and actually push it a bit further.

The content is almost by-the-by. The experience will change no matter what – you could be in the centre of your favourite action movie or there’s the eSports example. FIFA have a world championship every year, so do you then put this into one room at those championships – a reactive room where players are feeling it? Or do you go to Red Bull and say, ‘we’ll go into your Gaming Sphere, we’ll deck out a room in there and turn it into a hyperreactive, hyperresponsive eSports environment’?

A lot of it would come down to the publishers and the distributors. A game like League of Legends, made by Riot Games, we’d have to speak to them about if they’d be willing to do this. It would be tough for something like League in terms of the speed of things happening, it might be a bit much. But there are certain titles where it would work. FIFA it would easily work. FPS games, as you’ve seen, it can work. I don’t think it’ll be something for every title. In eSports, some of the games have a lot of things going on all the time. Single player experiences or one vs. one it would be perfect for something like that.

TS: What would be the next step after the launch of a consumer version?
HR: After a consumer version, do you then start to work with venues and think even bigger than room scale? There are already eSports venues that exist – Red Bull is another brand we’re talking. So, we’re thinking about kitting out venues with this kind of technology, that would be the next iteration of it. We’re a bit off that yet, it’s just a question of building out the prototype and trying to get it out into the hands of consumers at this stage. Just making it real for people, making it real what 5G can do for you.

TS: In 12 months’ time, where would you want this experience to be?
HR: I’d want it to be in your house with a 5G hub at the centre of it all, with partners you recognise that have wholly bought into it, and it won’t have, hopefully, costed a remortgage on your property. This would be something that people now associated with home entertainment and 5G as being the driving force behind that change.

Three collaborated on the experience with Connie Harrison who specialises in creating and directing multi-sensory immersive experiences using tech. Her team of experts included Magic Beans on spatial audio, Mike Ross on technical design, Immersive Me on lighting design, Alice Helps on set design and Perfect Cartel on set build. 

The post Bringing 5G to life: Three on its Call of Duty 5G gaming experience appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Mobile network provider Three is on a journey to transform the experience it delivers to customers, aiming to utilise technology to offer a more seamless service to those interacting with the brand – whether that’s online, in-store, or over the phone.

For Three’s website, the journey began not much more than half a year ago, with the focus on making the lives of customers easier rather than keeping an eye on what the competition is up to.

“We want to free the fun. And we don’t always have to look at our competitors. We look at how customers are interacting with our website, and where those friction points are, and overcome them to make it fun for the customer, to make it easier for customers. That means more engagement for us, more conversion for us, and ultimately the business is happy with that,” says Ruphinder Chahal, eCommerce execution consultant at Three.

“We’re either getting customers to engage with content when we want them to or getting them to buy. And that’s because it’s based on what the customer are telling us, not someone sitting in a room going ‘I think we should do this’. You really run with that mentality of ‘data is king, opinion is irrelevant’”

Three launched the first test of its website’s digital transformation in March and has since then launched 106 tests in total. Of the tests, which all go out to live traffic using A/B testing, there have been 10 that have achieved the desired results.

On occasion, there have been tests that Three completely believed would do well but found that wasn’t to be the case.

“We did a test where we thought that reducing the number of plans that we show to customers would increase our conversion – because we’re removing that complexity and almost making that choice for them by reducing the number of plans to three,” shares Darran Kolodziej, digital insight manager at Three, presenting an example. “We read in various places that three was the optimum number, so we thought we’d try it out. We thought that would propel conversion through the roof. But it had no effect.”

Moreover, some of Three’s tests have looked like they’re creating a more positive experience for the consumer but, instead, have had an undesired and unforeseen knock-on effect in other areas.

“It’s not just in one test, we’ve probably seen it in about eight or nine of our tests,” adds Chahal. “We think we’re optimising the journey for our customer, trying to remove those friction points, trying to make it clearer for the customer – then something else happens and we never would’ve imagined it.”

In order to run these tests and identify where it’s going wrong, Three placed Adobe’s Experience Cloud at the centre of its transformation – utilising Adobe Target and Analytics for Target in particular.

Three has been an Adobe Analytics customer for “a number of years” and “always found it to be the market leading product”, according to Kolodziej. As such, Three integrated Analytics for Target from the day that it had Target up-and-running, enabling it to “deep dive into the results of our tests to truly understand ‘is this working?’”, says Chahal.

With Target powering its transformation, the team has managed to achieve a 6.4 time return on investment, which far exceeds Three’s not quite as lofty expectations.

“The key outcomes for us at the end of the year were to get a return on investment – i.e. break even on our team – and also get some really good learnings,” explains Chahal. “Not only have we been able to achieve that, we’re also up 6.4 times and it’s been a phenomenal period of time from when we implemented it in mid-February. I don’t think any of us were expecting it but, for us to achieve it, is immense and something we’re really proud of at Three.”

Three is looking to build on the success it’s had so far by looking at moving toward one-to-one personalisation for customers.

It’s working to achieve this goal by working with Adobe partner Syntasa, which builds artificial intelligence (AI) models that push product recommendations, and its internal data science team to slowly edge toward providing that completed personalised experience for its customers. And this will be its main focus in the coming months.

Currently, Three aggregates customers into segments based on their similarities and interacts with them based on that.

“When we start doing the machine learning product recommendations, we’ll be able to understand how you behave with our site based on what the Adobe Target tool is telling us and push recommendations that are more relevant for you, and get immediate feedback as to if it is actually relevant to you,” states Chahal. “If you’re engaging with it, if you’re buying with it, if you’re just ignoring it, we can feed that back into the machine learning engine, which continuously improves on those recommendations. That, for me, is a massive piece. We’ll be getting it live before the end of the year but into 2020 is when we can really start revolutionising that shopping experience on the Three UK website.”

Beyond the website, the goal is to bring this digital transformation to the entire business, releasing developments in increments and targeting the middle of next year to have everything working seamlessly between all of its departments.

This will mean customers being reached with the same levels of personalisation whether they are on the website, in a retail store, opening up an email, or communicating with Three’s contact centre.

“It’s not just the online element of it. It’s tying this up with what other teams are doing as well,” explains Kolodziej. “What our customer comms teams are doing, our email, our SMS, etc. It’s about making sure the customer will see those offers across any channel.”

Three has already begun showing off some of the possibilities at its flagship store on London’s Oxford Street and there’s an initiative called ‘Three Store Now’, which displays the basics of what a seamless interaction between departments could look like.

“[With Three Store Now], Customers can start a chat with someone in their local retail store and at any point during that chat, if they feel like they want to come into store, they’ll go in and just pick up that conversation there,” adds Kolodziej. “It’s got the ability to do pictures and video as well. It’s a great way of engaging the retail staff and bringing the two channels together in quite a seamless experience, if the customer wants that. It’s all about letting them shop in the channel they want.”

Looking ahead, Three will be focused heavily on bringing forward this digital transformation across its business and implementing machine learning to create a true personalised experience. However, it’s still early days and it will be interesting to see how it all develops over the next few months and years.

“We’re quite aware that we’re only just scratching the surface with this product at the moment. So, looking toward the end of 2020, we want to be able to look back at ourselves as experts in the product and embed this as a culture across the whole team,” concludes Kolodziej.

The post “We want to free the fun”: Three on its digital transformation appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The ‘plug and play’ 5G hub provides unlimited data in the home for £35 per month on a 12-month contract. Being plug and play means that customers simply have to plug the device in and they are clear to enjoy the next generation service.

“Three’s 5G is going to revolutionise the home broadband experience. No more paying for landline rental, no more waiting for engineers, and even a same day delivery option. It really is the straightforward plug and play broadband that customers have been waiting for,” said Dave Dyson, Three CEO.

“We’ve taken a simple approach with one single truly unlimited data plan to give customers the opportunity to fully explore 5G and all its exciting possibilities. The ease and immediacy of it all means home broadband using 5G is going to be key to the future of the connected home.”

The 5G broadband hub has only launched for customers in London for the time being but Three promises to rollout 5G to 25 UK cities by the end of the year.

To accompany the launch of 5G broadband, Three has teamed up with designer Henry Holland and Magic Leap to create a ‘Living Room of the Future’, which is an immersive mixed reality experience delivered through a Magic Leap augmented reality headset. The 5G-powered experience is available to see at Three’s flagship Oxford Street store until November.

The post Three launches 5G for homes in London appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The study, which gathered the opinions of 6,135 Which? members, placed EE and O2 in the bottom three along with Vodafone, while Giffgaff came out on top among the 13 networks included.

Participants were asked to rate their mobile network provider based on customer service and value for money, as well as how satisfied they were and if they’d recommend their provider to friends and family.

Vodafone only manged to receive one-star ratings for customer service, value for money, and technical support. 20 per cent of Vodafone customers said the customer service was poor, while 20 per cent rated the network as being ‘poor value for money’ and one in seven rating the quality of its technical support as poor. 25 per cent also criticised Vodafone’s incentives and rewards.

Just 27 per cent of EE, the UK’s largest mobile network, customers said they had received good or excellent technical support – with less than half saying the same about ease of contact and customer service.

One in 10 O2 customers rated its value for money as poor. And just 25 per cent rated its incentives and rewards as good or excellent, despite its O2 Priority scheme.

On the other hand, nearly all of Giffgaff’s customers said it was good or excellent when it comes to value for money, and that they’d recommend the network to friends and family.

Sim-only deals were found to be on average 31 per cent (£3.56 a month) more expensive with one of the ‘Big Four’ providers – EE, O2, Vodafone, and Three. And it’s a similar story when it comes to the month contract price for an iPhone XS, which was found to be 18 per cent more (£10.11), and a Samsung Galaxy S10, at six per cent more (£3.22).

“The continuing reign of smaller networks over the big players goes to show exactly how important customer support and value for money are to mobile users,” said Natalie Hitchins, head of home products and services at Which?.

“If you think you’re paying too much or are not getting the level of service you expect from your provider, you should shop around for a better deal – you might find you save yourself some money and probably a lot of grief, too.”

The post Which?: Vodafone, EE, O2 are the UKs worst mobile networks appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The BT-owned network has now rated as the best network for 11 consecutive rounds of RootMetrics testing, since it began UK-wide network testing in the second half of 2013. This latest round consisted of 600,476 tests, 20,294 miles driven, 652 indoor locations tested, and covered 100 per cent of the UK population.

Vodafone scored strongly across categories also, leapfrogging Three into second place for overall performance thanks to strong results in network speed, data performance, and text performance. Three improved in call performance testing and solidified its position in term of reliability, falling just short of EE in the category for the third consecutive period.

On the other hand, O2 ranked last in four of the six categories tested – identical to the prior round of testing conducted earlier in 2018.

“EE’s strong performance in testing is testament to the consistent investment into improving its 4G network,” said Kevin Hasley, head of product at RootMetrics and executive director of performance benchmarking at IHS Markit “Vodafone and Three are also making improvements as they vie for market position. Although O2 ranks fourth in our testing, it is well placed to improve, having secured key parts of the 5G spectrum in 2018.

“The latest data suggests that download speeds are highly influenced by variables such as network capacity, demand, time of day and location. Our latest approach to testing in highly congested areas enables consumers and businesses to be better informed before making key buying decisions, such as where to visit, shop, eat and work. This type of analysis will be key to providing accurate data on 5G experience when it rolls out in earnest.”

The post EE ranked as the number one UK mobile network again appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

In P3’s latest mobile benchmarks report, EE achieved a grade of ‘very good’ and a score of 879, leading the way in voice and data. Vodafone followed in second with a ‘good’ grade, scoring 796, while Three achieved a score of 711 and O2 was ‘satisfactory’ at 663.

EE came out on top in all tested disciplines, according to P3, and leads the way in the majority of the single categories it tested in the survey of more than 26 per cent of the UK population in 22 cities, 35 towns, and along 7,300 miles of major roads.

For the first time in the UK, P3 included walktests on trains. It was found that, despite EE leading the way again, all of the four networks are weak in this area. EE only managed to achieve 48 per cent of the points available in the test, while Vodafone hit 29 per cent, Three was down at 27 per cent, and O2 down further at 24 per cent.

“The UK’s networks improved overall on last year,” said Hakan Ekmen, CEO of P3 communications. “We adapt our testing methodology every year to keep close to technological advances as well as to the actual experience of end-users. This year, we have added the railway measurements into our scope for the P3 connect Mobile Benchmark in the UK and derived some interesting conclusions. For next year, we expect the first developments in 5G to come.”

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