Three completes £250m UK Broadband acquisition

Three has announced it has completed the acquisition of UK Broadband from PCCW for approximately £250 million.

The initial announcement was made back in February, as the team fulfilled its ambitions of entering the broadband market. While we assumed there was enough complaining to be done in the mobile space with the ‘Make the Air Fair’ campaign, it would appear moany Three would like to help out in the broadband arena as well.

UK Broadband currently serves around 17,000 customers across London and Swindon through its Relish brand. Three has highlighted there will be no changes made for these customers, and the brand will continue to exist for the immediate future. Long-term ambitions to create a Three broadband business have not been outlined for the moment, though it does appear to be a useful additional to the family, building on the MiFi and HomeFi offerings.

HomeFi is essentially an alternative for fixed broadband. A router, connected using a SIM for connectivity, can make use of Three’s mobile service, in areas where there is little congestion on its network. The marketing for the offering is similar to other products it has launched, fundamentally indirectly trash-talking competitors, before giving itself a glowing reference and a firm slap on the back.

“UK Broadband gives us an opportunity to expand our ambition to provide high quality and great value internet connectivity for UK consumers,” said Three CEO Dave Dyson, back when the deal was first announced in February.

Another useful little addition to the Three business is roughly 40MHz of spectrum across the 3.4GHz, 3.6GHz, 3.9GHz bands. Although it won’t be of much use in the immediate future, these are bands which hold some potential when 5G becomes available.

According to the Telegraph, Three has plans to cover around 40% of the UK using fixed wireless technology, to offer 1Gbps home broadband services. While Three does have loft ambitions to compete with the big boys in the UK telco space, a lack of fixed and content services does put it at a disadvantage when competing against the likes of BT or Vodafone, who can bundle services for cheaper rates.