In the latest YouGov survey of Mobile Broadband users Three outperformed rivals to win by a long shot, coming top in ten of the twelve quality criteria.

The result illustrates Three’s massive network investment programme – a project that has consolidated its position as the country’s biggest 3G network.

As well as increasing its reach across the UK to more than 95% population coverage for 3G services, Three has also been investing heavily in improving data speeds and strengthening its network as data usage on mobile devices continues to increases dramatically.

Along with the fastest connection speeds, our customers rated Three number one for reliability, billing, overall quality of service and ease of use.  In feedback comments, customers also labelled Three as the best value for money, and gave us the highest rating of user satisfaction.

The YouGov survey asked more than 2,000 customers from Three, Vodafone, Orange, O2 and T-Mobile, along with smaller providers, to rate the level of service they got from their provider on twelve key points.

These were installation of software, network coverage, getting connected, staying connected, reliability during the day and during the evening, download speeds, upload speeds, ease of use, customer services, billing and overall quality. 

Customers rated us the best in ten of these twelve criteria.

Three has the largest share of the UK mobile broadband market - at around 35% - and has been the market-leader since launching the country’s first high-speed mobile data service in September 2007. 

This has been achieved by providing the best MBB contract deals around- such as £15 for 15GB – great value PAYG offers, and the UK’s most competitive iPad tariffs.

Three also continues to drive technological development in the market, by introducing products such as Mobile WiFi (MiFi)*.

Three’s Director of Mobile Broadband, Joe Parker, said: “It’s great that our customers have rated us the Number One Mobile Broadband provider in the UK.

“It is a customer endorsement of the massive investment we have been put into our network over the past two years and the speed at which this programme is developing.  The network continues to grow in reach, speed and capacity.

“It also shows that what customers value most when it comes to mobile broadband are reliability, speed, coverage, ease of use and great pricing – areas where we excel in the latest YouGov survey.”

Three’s network has grown considerably in the past 18-months, moving from 7,500 sites at the end of 2008 to more than 11,400 today. This has been possible due to a network consolidation programme, through MBNL, which will see Three’s 3G network grow to more than 12,500 sites by the end of this year.

Three also continues to invest millions of pounds into upgrading our backhaul network to give us greater capacity and faster speeds, while updating our transmission equipment to the latest technology.