Three will offer 5G at no extra cost (but you'll need a new phone, of course)

Three will offer 5G to its customers at no extra charge on existing tariffs - but naturally, you will need to have a 5G handset.

And, if you want to move over to Three on an SIM-only unlimited 5G plan, then the network has announced they will start at £20; a good price indeed. It’s certainly true that an unlimited plan is a good idea; 5G will burn through the gigabytes pretty quickly, depending on what you’re doing of course.

We also now know that Three isjoining Vodafoneand O2in offering the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855-poweredXiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G(as we’ve long suspected) in addition to theSamsung Galaxy S10 5G.

Those two phones will be available from Three later in the month in preparation for when it starts to roll out 5G services.

But there’s another device available from Three, too; theHuawei Mate 20 X 5Gis available from today. It’s certainly true - demonstrated by the announcement of the Mate 20 X 5G on Three - that we’re seeing a thawing in attitudes toHuawei’s trade bannow.

Indeed, we know the Huawei handset is definitely also coming to Sky Mobile and will be sold by Carphone Warehouse. We suspect it will also come to Vodafone, EE and O2 in due course.

“It is surely only a matter of time before all four UK operators offer unlimited 5G data,” says CCS Insight Kester Mann on the announcement.

“Three’s hand was likely forced to some extent by Vodafone’s initial disruptive and unexpected pricing strategy for 5G. [It’s] in a commanding position to undercut any rival.”

Three reckons that 80 percent of its current data traffic will be covered by its 5G service within three years. As with the 5G rollout on other networks, there will also be a speed boost for those accessing data on 3G and 4G.

Three will roll out its 5G network in25 towns and cities initiallyand claims its network will be the UK’s fastest due to the amount of spectrum it owns - 100MHz of contiguous spectrum since you asked.

However, we’d say the proof is in the pudding and, with some impressive speedsfrom EE especially, we can’t say how true Three’s claims are until we actually see it working and measure for ourselves.