Last week I attended an event hosted by 3UK.  In attendance were a variety of 3UK staff from Marketing & PR, Products & Services, Customer Services, and the Networks team.  I had a chance to chat with people for each area and was able to ask a wide range of questions, especially those that you had added as comments to my request last week.  As a result, I’m able to provide a glimpse into what 2010 holds for 3UK (although nothing truly exclusive and brand new was announced, there was some useful information provided)…

Please read the questions and answers after the break…

So, in no particular order…

1. I asked if 3UK have any plans for a femtocell solution similar to the Vodafone Sure Signal.

In a word, no.  3UK are concentrating on improving their network for everyone such that femtocell solutions are not needed.  They commented that many of their customers are not high spenders, and can’t afford a femtocell solution on top of an ADSL line; and even some of their customers don’t even have a home phone line, making 3UK’s priority on making the network available to everyone understandable.  They also felt it was a bit off charging customers to buy a solution to fix network problems!

2. In terms of the network, where are they?  What are the plans to improve coverage in rural areas? What about signal dead spots (notably Manchester and mid-Wales)?

The network improvements continue, and they have so far only been dealing with the more rural locations, and with good reason.  The  highest spec replacement equipment (which can deal with really high call and data volumes, and a key component of their network replacement for cities) has only just been delivered by Nokia.  As such, all the network work so far has been the more rural locations, and not where they have really high capacity needs in metropolitan areas.  They can now continue their work with this kit, which should help Manchester, and they felt the overall programme of work should be complete by around October time.  Oh, and they haven’t forgotten about mid-Wales either.

3. The coverage map doesn’t show enough detail, especially around planned outages, and there’s only a couple of days warning of outages.

I spoke to a very senior person in 3UK about this issue, and he confirmed that he is well aware of how annoying this all is.  There are lots of changes going around behind the scenes, but one of them will be to improve the planning of outages to allow the information to be provided to everyone much earlier than currently, and he was confident that this programme of activities would also be able to offer the customer better information on network problems in the future.

4. Why do 3UK charge for Facebook SMS, and not have these come out of inclusive text allowances?

I got a very candid response, and basically, it’s not something many people have asked about before! As with many things, they made it chargeable when they first offered it to see how popular it was, and if enough people ask for it to be taken from the inclusive texts, then they will.  They did feel that more people were using either Facebook clients or the mobile Facebook website, rather than texts, but would listen to customer feedback on this point.

5. The perennial problem; customer service quality…

Again, a candid chat with a member of the 3UK Customer Services team confirmed that they are well aware of the issues, and feel some of them are caused by the process limits they place on the call centre staff (the other key issue seems to stem from the call centre not listening to the actual problem).  They are 6 months into a 2 year improvement programme around Customer Services, and believe that things are, and will continue to improve.

6. What are they doing about the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic firmware problem that prevents the use of the new free Ovi Maps?

Since Nokia announced the new Ovi Maps clients, they have been working directly with Nokia to understand the reasons for the minimum firmware requirements, and 3UK had already received from Nokia a new firmware with all the 3UK customisations required for release.  This would be tested with some urgency, and so (assuming there are no problems) this will be available as soon as both companies are in a position to release it.  The testing takes at least a few weeks, so you’ll need to wait a little longer, but it is on the way….

7. What new phones are on the horizon?

Now, this is never an easy question for a network to answer.  One thing 3UK acknowledge is they need to add a “Coming Soon” list of handsets to the website, and this should appear quite soon.  In terms of devices that I saw that are not yet formally available on 3UK, I saw…

• Samsung Galaxy (Android device)
• Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 (Another Android device)
• Sony Ericsson Vivaz (capable of recording 720p HD and running Symbian)
• a new-ish Nokia touchscreen (likely to have been the Nokia 5230)

In terms of already released devices, I saw lots of HTC Heroes, a Nokia 6700 Slide, and a BlackBerry or two.

In conversation, I understand 3UK will have 6 Android devices in their lineup by June this year, and that won’t include the HTC Hero, as by then they will be selling the next HTC device on from the Hero…

I’d like to thank 3mobilebuzz for arranging the event, and all the 3UK people who were there and willing to answer questions!  Finally, thanks to Nick, Andy, Robert, Stuart, Gareth and Paul who raised questions for me to ask, and hopefully I asked all your questions (there wasn’t much discussion over the loss of 3 Like Home, and I can’t see it coming back anytime soon either).

In a move designed to make it clearer what the purpose of the device is, Vodafone has rebranded their Vodafone Access Gateway as Vodafone Sure Signal; ie a device that should guarantee you a good signal in your own home.  The Vodafone Sure Signal (which we covered at its launch here) is now a lot cheaper than it was (£50 to buy outright for many contract customers, compared to £160 for outright purchase at launch), and still needs a minimum 1mbps broadband connection, although most people now have well in excess of that.  To clarify that £50 price; you need a monthly contract of £25 or more to qualify for the £50 price; if your contract is less, or you have a PAYG contract, then the price is £120 to buy outright (although for all customers there is an option of a £5 per month contract instead with a minimum contract term).

So, if you live in a marginal signal area and you have a Vodafone contract (or PAYG phone), you might want to consider whether £50 (or £120)  is money well spent to ensure a good voice (and 3G) signal for your own personal use…

We first covered the Vodafone Access Gateway here, basically this femtocell allows you to connect selected Vodafone UK phones to it via 3G and it will transmit back to Vodafone using your Home Broadband connection (minimum 1Mbps required), allowing you to provide yourself with decent 3G coverage at home (or work) if the coverage provided by Vodafone is not as good as you would like.

Well, Andrew Grill over at London Calling decided to buy one the week of release to provide a better Vodafone signal in his basement flat, and he has published his review here.  Although it shows a few teething troubles with the stores, he reports that it works “as advertised and the calls made on it seem clear”.

This little device is a femtocell.  Femtocells connect to power and your broadband connection, and provide you with access to the 3G phone network of one of the networks, in this case, Vodafone.

Whilst T-Mobile (who although have admitted they are working on a similar device, have stated they are not ready to announce any products yet) plan to use femtocells to help provide fill in coverage for their network, and hence want the devices to be used and usable by everyone, the Vodafone Access Gateway is a very private device; you’ll need to register which Vodafone phone numbers can use the device to help protect your personal investment in the device.

Yes, investment, for the device will not come free… £160 to buy one outright, or £5 per month as an addition to an existing contract (it is possible large spenders of £60 or more per month may be able to get one thrown into a new contract for free, but this is unconfirmed).  It can support up to 4 voice calls at the same time (although it will give “access to all of Vodafone’s sevices” there’s not a lot of technical data on whether data is supported, or how much broadband bandwidth is required to support those 4 concurrent calls).

Vodafone have announced a website for more information on the Vodafone Access Gateway, but at the time of writing, the webpage simply says “Coming Soon”.

We, can, however, tell you that it is due very soon; we should see the devices on sale next week (1st July), with the website providing more information going live between Monday and Wednesday next week.

Just last week, T-Mobile launched their Wi-Fi Broadband router, the T-Mobile Mobile Broadband Share Dock.  This is a Wi-Fi access point that accepts the T-Mobile USB Mobile Broadband dongle, and allows you to share and access the mobile broadband connection.  It’s limited to 3 concurrent devices, and as part of configuring it, you set a password to protect access.

The biggest downside is that in the short term T-Mobile have stated it will only be available with a *new* Mobile Broadband contract (£20 for 18 months which includes the Mobile Broadband dongle), but some people are reporting it’s going to be available to existing customers, at a price which varies based on your current contract.  This should be available in stores around now, although it does not appear yet on the T-Mobile online store.

Now, this week, 3UK have launched their own equivalent device, the D100 Router.  Looking a little smaller and neater, it also performs the same function; providing access to the 3 USB Modem via wireless, and 3 say this can be shared with up to 4 people.  It will work with all Huawei USB dongles, although possibly not the elder Huawei USB Modem devices.  However, there are something about this which have attracted our attention…

Although we have little other details, we notice an ethernet socket on the side; it will be interesting to see what this is for, and whether it allows you to use this on both wired and wireless networks.  3UK are also currently making this only available with a new mobile broadband, but that can be a contract or PAYG, and we understand it will be available within the next few weeks, and priced as follows:

• If you are a new customer, you can pay £69.99 when you purchase either a Mobile Broadband contract *or* a Pay As You Go USB dongle.
• If you are a new customer, and you buy 2 “contracts” at the same time, it will only cost £34.99.  We’re not sure if this means you can purchase a phone contract and a broadband contract and benefit from the half price, but we hope it does.
• Finally, if you are an existing 3UK monthly contract customer, it will cost you £34.99 with a new Mobile Broadband contract.

We would recommend and remind you that 3UK are still offering monthly the top Mobile Broadband 15GB tariff at half price for existing customers (ie £15 per month); we’re waiting for confirmation from 3UK as to whether you can use both these offers together.

If you plan to share out your USB Mobile Broadband device with either of these routers, we’d recommend making sure you are on one of the networks higher tariffs.  Certainly the ability to allow friends and family to access the internet when visting you (or you visiting them) or just the ability to create your own wi-fi access point whilst travelling (allowing the connection to be shared by a number of devices) will make these popular sellers.

Next up, we hope the networks release devices that perform the reverse; using an existing fixed broadband connection to provide a femtocell; providing network coverage for your phone in areas where the signal is currently poor.  For many, these type of devices, even if limited to voice and text would be welcome.  They are being worked on (and we have covered these devices before), but it’s still not clear when they will be available for sale.

T-Mobile (through T-Mobile Venture Fund) has invested an undisclosed sum into Ubiquisys, a femtocell manufacturer. A femtocell is a home base station for your mobile phone, ensuring you get 3G data and good signal strength, which usually utilises the broadband connection to route the mobile phone data and calls back to your network operator. This bodes well for the future, and we should expect to see femtocells becoming a lot more common over the next couple of years.

Story courtesy of SMS Text News.