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The boss of mobile phone firm Three has hit out at the UK’s “abysmal” 5G speeds and availability.
Chief executive Robert Finnegan made the comments as he urged regulators to approve the company’s planned merger with Vodafone – arguing the £15bn move would pave the way for better investment in network infrastructure.
It came as Three reported pre-tax losses of £30m during the first six months of 2024 – an improvement on the £76m it lost during the same period last year.
Mr Finnegan said that despite scaling back its capital expenditure, the firm had “continued to make a loss driven by the escalating inflationary costs of operating our network”.
He said: “Our cash flows have been negative since 2020 and our costs have almost doubled in five years, meaning investment in [the] network is unsustainable.
“UK mobile networks rank an abysmal 22nd out of 25 in Europe on 5G speeds and availability, with the dysfunctional structure of the market denying us the ability to invest sustainably to fix this situation.”
Mr Finnegan added: “Our merger with Vodafone will unlock £11bn worth of investment in digital infrastructure, creating a best-in-class 5G network for the UK and helping to grow the UK economy.”
Three said his comments were based on a report by research firm Opensignal earlier this year, which found the UK was lagging behind both its European and G7 counterparts.
Denmark topped the research’s rankings for mobile download speed, with only Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland performing worse than the UK.
The UK’s four main mobile providers – Three, Vodafone, BT/EE and Virgin Media-O2 – have been rolling out the technology to provide 5G to phone users across the country.
In 2020 the government decided to block Chinese tech giant Huawei from involvement in building the network due to security…
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