Vodafone has agreed to buy CK Hutchison's 49% stake in VodafoneThree for £4.3 billion, making it the sole owner of the UK's largest mobile network. The deal was announced on 5 May 2026 and affects customers across five brands: Vodafone, Three, SMARTY, VOXI and Talkmobile. It still needs regulatory clearance and is expected to complete in the second half of 2026.
What Vodafone has agreed
VodafoneThree was formed in May 2025 when Vodafone UK and Three UK merged. Under that original deal, Vodafone held 51% of the new company and CK Hutchison held the remaining 49%, with Vodafone given the option to buy full control after three years.
Vodafone has chosen to act far earlier. Less than a year after the merger completed, it has agreed to buy out CK Hutchison's share and take 100% ownership. The buyout values VodafoneThree at £13.85 billion including debt, which is below the £16.5 billion valuation set when the merger was first agreed in 2023. Vodafone will fund the purchase from its existing cash.
The transaction still requires approval under the UK National Security and Investment Act. Vodafone expects it to complete during the second half of 2026. Max Taylor remains chief executive of VodafoneThree, and the company says its multi-brand strategy will not change as a result of the deal.
What customers will notice now
For most people on a Vodafone or Three SIM, the ownership change itself will not be visible. The bigger story is the network integration that has been running since the merger, and which the buyout is designed to speed up.
VodafoneThree says seven million Three and SMARTY customers have already seen their 4G speeds rise by an average of 20%, and by up to 40% in some towns and cities, as spectrum from both networks has been combined. More than 8,000 masts have been upgraded to let around 21 million customers connect automatically to whichever of the two networks has the stronger signal in their area, at no extra cost. The company also says it has filled coverage gaps across 16,500 square kilometres of the UK.
If you are a Three or SMARTY customer, this means your phone may already be using parts of the Vodafone network without any action on your part. Full ownership gives Vodafone a freer hand to push these upgrades through faster.
Five brands now sit on one network
The competition picture is where this deal matters most for anyone shopping for a SIM. When the merger was approved, the Competition and Markets Authority warned that Three had long acted as a lower-cost operator that helped hold prices down across the market. Cutting the number of major networks from four to three raised concerns that bills could drift upward over time. A three-year cap on certain tariffs remains in place regardless of who owns the company.
Full Vodafone ownership sharpens an underlying question. The pressure that Three once applied as an independent challenger now has to come from inside Vodafone's own line-up. Vodafone, Three, SMARTY, VOXI and Talkmobile all run on the same network and increasingly compete for the same budget and flexible SIM-only customers, separated more by branding than by genuinely different products. Industry analysts at CCS Insight expect the Vodafone brands to win out over the Three brands in the long run.
There is a counterweight, though. Smaller virtual networks now account for close to one in five UK mobile connections, up from under 15% in 2021. New entrants such as Revolut, which offers unlimited calls and texts with 20GB of roaming data for £12.50 a month, are bringing fresh price competition from outside the traditional networks, with Monzo, Klarna and Lidl all exploring the market.
What this means for customers
Nothing about your current SIM changes because of this deal, and you do not need to do anything. Your contract terms, allowance and price stay the same.
It is still worth paying attention. With Vodafone now owning Three, SMARTY, VOXI and Talkmobile, the case for treating them as four separate options gets weaker. If you are choosing between them, compare them on price and allowance directly rather than assuming one is cheaper or faster by reputation. SMARTY, VOXI and Talkmobile in particular cover very similar ground.
If you want to keep your flexibility while the market settles, a 30-day SIM-only deal lets you switch networks with 30 days' notice if a better option appears. Anyone considering a move can keep their existing number using a PAC code. And because annual price rises still apply across most of these brands, check the stated increase before you sign up: our coverage of the recent Three and Vodafone price rises explains what to expect.
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