Three SIM Pack: Never thought I'd see one of these again

So my mind was made up. I'd tombstone onto the deadly rocks of Three.

I initially went into a 3 Store to have a look at the tariff options, but being a mobile phone store I had to get out after 30 seconds.

So later at home I decided to order online. I followed the SIM Only link for the iPhone on their website and ordered away. All that was needed was my postal address. That was it. There was no indication that I'd completed the form properly though, so I did it twice. I'll probably end up with 2 SIM packs. Something to sort out there, Three.

The next day the SIM pack arrived. Time for the first test: 3's Customer Service. This was famous when they started for being exclusively based in Indian call centres. It was far from good at the time, so had they improved?

I'm pleased to say they have. It was efficient, friendly (perhaps a little too friendly in that staged sort of way) and the staff were helpful and well informed. I had to go through the process of registering my details and setting up for payment.

At the end I choose the £15 per month package with a 30 day minimum term. That gets you the following:

• 300 Any Network Minutes
• 3000 3 to 3 Minutes (unlikely to use many of them)
• 3000 Texts (With my addiction to texting I'm quite likely to hammer this)
• and 1GB of Data (quite generous seeing as other networks give you 500 or 750mb)

So I have to say in terms of the Customer Service and the normally dreaded Offshore Call Centre: not bad. Not bad at all.

Videocalling: No one ever bothered did they?

Videocall anyone?

When Three launched they only really had one use for all that bandwidth: videocalling. It never really took off though for some reason even though it was touted as the future. Luckily for them though all that investment in the network has paid off now the mobile web is upon us and we want to consume more and more data on our phones.

It took a while for the initial SIM to get activated. For a while I wondered if 3G was ever going to work as it was just stuck on 2G. I suspect it activated on Orange's network first (Three use Orange as a fallback for voice and texts when your out of their own 3G network) sometime before it did on their own network. Eventually it did though later in the day.

At first though I seemed to get little connectivity. This got me worried. Had I not been given the correct package? They had barely started to offer the iPhone after all. Luckily though when I plugged the iPhone back into iTunes it asked me if I wanted to Update Carrier settings. Clearly this was a good sign and it knew I needed new settings in order to use 3. Lovely.

Once this was applied all seemed well and data worked as expected. In fact it worked very well. Instantly seeming nippier compared to O2's clogged up network. For the first time I managed to walk home from work (an hour long stroll from Central to North London) and stream radio over 3G with little at all in the way of interruption bar the odd bit of buffering. Previously on O2 I'd bizarrely lose all signal altogether walking up the hill on the Pentonville Road.

So so far, so good in terms of their network. I can actually dial a number on the iPhone and it rings! Straight away!

Fancy that.

Useful Links:
Three Sim Only Package