Drei Austria (3)

Company Overview

Hutchison Drei Austria GmbH is a telecommunications company based in Vienna, operating since May 5, 2003 under the brand 3 Austria. Hutchison Drei Austria is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings Limited. The company was the first mobile carrier to operate in Austria. In January 2013 the company undertook a takeover of third largest carrier Orange Austria, dissolving the Orange brand in the process and merging the network's 2G and 3G infrastructure into its own.

The company operates 2G services on 900 and 1800 MHz, and 3G services over B1 (2100 MHz), with DC-HSPA+ being launched in March 2010. 3 Austria began rolling out its 4G LTE network in 2014 and now offers LTE-A carrier aggregation on its operating bands B1 (2100 MHz), B3 (1800 MHz), B7 (2600 MHz), and B8 (900 MHz), advertising peak DL data rates of up to 300 Mbps.

Drei launched "Pre-5G" Massive MIMO in selected areas on its LTE network in April 2018, with a national rollout over the following year.

Drei IoT

In May 2019 Drei announced the successful national rollout of its NB-IoT network. The network is understood to operate over the operator's existing B8 (900 MHz) LTE band.

Drei 5G

Drei has trialled 5G technologies in partnership with ZTE. The two companies jointly launched a 5G Innovation Lab as announced in July 2018. The company secured 100 MHz of 5G spectrum in the March 2019 national auction from 3590 to 3690 MHz.

Drei officially kicked off its 5G network in mid-June 2019, with the launch of commercial services in the city of Linz. The company later expanded the network to Portschach in early August and Worgl towards the end of August.