[3GScottishUser]

Published in M2 PressWIRE on Wednesday, 10 May 2006 at 12:34 GMT


London: 3, the mobile media company,today announced that it has entered into a national roaming agreement with Orange.

The new agreement follows the completion of an auction for 3's national roaming business. All potential suppliers were evaluated prior to the auction and those that met 3's requirements for the supply of national roaming services were invited to register. Orange tendered the most competitive bid for the supply of voice, text and data services and has been selected as the preferred national roaming provider for 3 from the end of 2006.

The 3 network provides coverage for voice, text and 3G mobile media services to 88% of the UK population and the new agreement with Orange, which has 99% coverage for voice and text services, will ensure 3 customers continue to enjoy the national coverage that they are used to.

3 customers will continue to roam on O2, the current provider of national roaming to 3, until the transition phase commences in late 2006. Following the transition phase existing customers' handsets will select the Orange network in preference to O2, although they will still be able to roam onto O2. Going forward into 2007 all new customers will only roam onto the Orange network.

Bob Fuller, CEO 3 UK said: "Following a thorough and competitive process over the last eighteen months, I'm very pleased to announce that 3 has a new national roaming partner in the UK. It was important we had a competitive tender and I am delighted with the outcome of the process. This is a good agreement for both 3 and Orange and will ensure that we continue to offer a great service to our customers." Bernard Ghillebaert, Executive Vice-President of Orange UK said: "The Orange network is renowned as one of the most robust and reliable networks in the UK and it makes commercial sense for us to utilise this asset within the wholesale market. We will continue to offer the highest levels of network reliability and service to all of our 15million customers and look forward to a fruitful relationship with 3." Under the terms of the agreement, when 3 customers are outside areas covered by the 3 network they will seamlessly roam onto the Orange network, where they will be able to continue to make and receive voice calls, send and receive text and multi-media messages, and access GPRS data services.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

http://www.m2.com/m2/web/story.php/2006367CCD82E1D012DB8025716A003F5037

[a_ukboy]

I for one am pleased with this, my own personal experiance with o2 coverage has been poor, specially in Southern England, i know for past experiance with Orange that thier coverage seems one of the best :)

[Ben]

I for one am pleased with this, my own personal experiance with o2 coverage has been poor, specially in Southern England, i know for past experiance with Orange that thier coverage seems one of the best :)
Which is a testament to how subjective coverage can be! I do think Orange's network will be a better fit for Three's though, and if the handover really can be 'seamless' then that's even better.

[miffed]

I for one am pleased with this, my own personal experiance with o2 coverage has been poor, specially in Southern England, i know for past experiance with Orange that thier coverage seems one of the best :)


Really ? My experience has been the complete opposite !

(I am starting to think I live in some kind of parallel universe -what with this and my "Vodafone *lack of* CS" issues :) )

[stuartturrell]

will it be seamless? So i can be talking on the 3 network, roam over to orange and there will be no disruption?? I cant see that happening? Can it???

[Ben]

Well the article suggests that but I'm not sure if it's possible. I guess it's a wait-and-see.

[stuartturrell]

What would happen if you roamed over out of three's 3g service and romaed onto orange's 3g service? Would it not let you access the 3g (is it only 2g that three users are allowed to use)?

[Ben]

I'm assuming it's a GSM-only agreement, as a WCDMA agreement would make for a 'lazy' Three.

[3GScottishUser]

It is a GSM only agreement. Orange 3G will remain exclusive to Orange customers.

[gorilla]

do 3 not have better 3g coverage than orange anyway?

[crowfield99]

It is a GSM only agreement. Orange 3G will remain exclusive to Orange customers.

And if they ever do im moving to another network - Vodafone would look a good step forward. Should have stuck with 02 - 3 an o2 have two good things in common. They don't work often or have problems

[miffed]

So will there ever be a 99% Three network then ?

During my lifetime ?

[Hands0n]

Ultimately there has to be. It cannot be in 3's interests to have to have a roaming agreement in place with other mobile network operators. Unless you are very old indeed it also has to be within your lifetime :)

Certainly, I would expect 3 to do away with their roaming agreements within the next three years, always assuming that they last that long in their present corporate form.

[3GScottishUser]

3 years? Its not plausable..... It took all the rest more than 10 years to get to 99% population. Its easy to cover 50-70% as you just have to cover areas where there are masses of population (like cities), go beyond that and you have to build far more cell sites to cover fewer people.

There appears to be a fine line in terms of the cost of providing your own network in rural areas and using someone else's.... It'll be interesting to see just how far H3G UK build out.

[Hands0n]

I guess that I'm thinking about "critical mass" for H3 and that does not necessarily mean they need to build out to true 99% of the population. Certainly down in the South East they have a comprehensive 3G coverage - my own [rural] point of reference being Kent, East Sussex and Sussex. London appears to be filling out nicely also - a harder proposition I suspect given its own unique geography.

Unfortunately, none of the players report on the 2G and 3G technologies individually - statistics they certainly have. Rather they smudge the figures into a round total coverage! More smoke and mirrors.

But I do rather fancy that 3 will dispense with roaming agreements once they feel that they have sufficient coverage [of their own 3G network] to produce the revenues and retentions they require. Again, from personal experience, I really cannot recall the last time I roamed off 3 and onto O2 in my area of living and work.

[Ben]

I think perhaps they'll at least start disabling segments of the country for roaming if they possibly can - or do it by disabling UK roaming on users accounts who rarely/never roam. I guess that they've signed this new deal with Orange suggests there's no imminent 99% network coverage, and beyond that we can't really tell what Three's plans are.