Vodafone stops selling 3 brand

Vodafone has announced that it will no longer offer new mobile services under the 3 mobile brand, more than two years after merging the two companies.

(Credit: Josh Taylor/ZDNet Australia)

The telco told ZDNet Australia today that as long as there are 3 mobile customers, the brand will continue and will keep existing customers on 3 plans. However, the telco said new customers will instead sign up for Vodafone plans and it will prefer that re-contracting 3 mobile customers switch to a Vodafone plan.

"From today, when a new customer joins us, they'll join Vodafone, and when a customer upgrades from 3 or wants a second service, we want Vodafone to be their first choice," Vodafone said. "Our 3 customers will be able to choose from the entire Vodafone range of mobiles including the latest devices to access Vodafone's new 850MHz network, great for smartphones and mobile broadband."

The announcement was first made on the 3 mobile website.

The full merger of the two companies is expected to take three years, to mid-2012, with CEO Nigel Dews saying in March that the unified company was now working to scale down the number of duplicated systems and the network infrastructure, after already completing the consolidation of sales systems, content management systems and corporate IT systems.

New customers who visit the 3 website will be redirected to the Vodafone page, while existing customers will be able to access their services through the 3 sites, which will be branded with the Vodafone logo in addition to the 3 brand.