My own view on this is that the introduction of 3G at 900Mhz introduces a completely unlevel playing field that puts Three at a marketing disadvantage, if not a practical one. The company has honoured its 3G licence terms completely by pushing out 3G into the country as widely as has been economically viable. Their work with MBNL has seen that deployment rationalised in conjunction with T-Mobile where mast shares have allowed Three to get around local planning issues and avoiding the rather large NIMBY population that we seem to have (all of whom, I'd contend, carry mobile phones upon their persons).

The way things stand at the moment, the OFCOM ruling allows the "big four" networks to increase their 3G coverage for almost no particular investment, while Three has to continue to fund the physical deployment of cells to compete. In any other trading environment the Competition Commission would be involved. So I call shame on the regulator, OFCOM, for permitting this to happen and risk the only truly innovative mobile network operator the UK has.