The UK’s fourth largest mobile network is to run an adblocking trial with a view to providing customers with a largely advert-free internet experience.
Three will ask a proportion of its 10 million customers to sign up for the 24-hour trial in mid-June.
It says advertisers should pay for the data costs which ads can incur and claims it wants to improve customer privacy as well as the browsing experience.
However it isn’t trying to get ads removed completely.
“This is the next step in our journey to make mobile ads better for our customers,” said chief marketing officer Tom Malleschitz.
“The current ad model is broken. It frustrates customers, eats up their data allowance and can jeopardise their privacy. Something needs to change.
“We can only achieve change by working with all stakeholders in the advertising industry – customers, advertising networks and publishers – to create a new form of advertising that is better for all parties.”
Many newspapers and news websites rely on ads for revenue, while businesses are spending a greater proportion of their advertising budgets online.
The technology Three plan to use belongs to Israeli company Shine, which already provides network-level blocking for Jamaican mobile company Digicel.
Adblocking is more prevalent on desktop computers than mobile devices at present but, should Three press ahead with its plans, rival networks could scramble to follow suit.