If you have recently visited the 3 Mobile website, then you may have noticed that much of the stock is actually “out of stock”. Since the purchase/merger of the Vodafone and 3 Mobile/Hutchison brands 2 years ago, 3 Mobile has slowly taken a back seat in the mobile and mobile broadband markets.

This week, the final stages of the eventual closure of the 3 Mobile brand took shape. What does this mean if you are potential new customer? Any new plans offered by 3 Mobile, be they prepaid mobile, prepaid mobile broadband or contract mobile, will need to be purchased directly from Vodafone Ausralia, as 3 Mobile is not selling anything new.

If you are an existing 3 Mobile customer, then it means you can continue to access ’3′ services such as ‘My 3′ and ‘Planet 3′. Even prepaid customers will be able to recharge their SIM cards in the same way — or through Vodafone stores.

Nothing changes for you, you’ll still be able to recharge your 3 Prepaid service as quickly and easily as ever – either online or on your mobile, or by calling 2224 (Voice) or 131 921 (Mobile Broadband). You can also pick up your 3 recharge voucher at more places including any Vodafone store, Vodafone dealer, or at any participating store nationally where you see a 3 or Vodafone logo.

Vodafone has just announced that calls between 3 and Vodafone customers on post paid plans are now free.

From the 21st of July, 3 stores will become ‘mutli-branded’, and will sell all the Vodafone range of mobile phones, mobile broadband devices, prepay and postpaid caps and plans.

120 Vodafone-exclusive stores across the country are also being updated, VHA says, with a focus on “a new and improved customer service experience in-store,” likely to be similar to Telstra’s own so-called T-Life stores, which began launching last year.

“By bringing Vodafone products and services to 3 stores there will bring more choice for our customers, supported by the strength of our Vodafone company-owned stores, which will be refitted to improve the customer experience.”

And as many had begun to notice, customers on postpaid Vodafone or 3 plans can now make free calls to each other, an improvement from the previously offered free 3-to-3 or Vodafone-to-Vodafone calls.

The rollout will be progressive. It will be initially rolled to Vodafone customers (ie they get free calls to 3 mobile) and will then go the other way with 3 customers getting free access to Vodafone customers by the end of July.

Vodafone customers will see calls appear as ‘V23′ on the bill, while 3 customers will see ’32V’.

The plan eventually is to close down the “3″ brand in Australia and only operate with the Vodafone brand.

Speed is obviously a burning question for anyone looking to use a mobile broadband offering. The best way to test speed is to borrow a USB modem from a friend and test it out at home. If its for business then rest assured that if you are traveling around capital cities all providers will perform relatively well. From some recent research I undertook, 3 Mobile has been one of the star performers outside of Telstra in terms of speed. You can read the review we did here.

However 3 Mobile Prepaid Broadband is more than just a good performing solution, its also very good value. They are currently offering their E1756 modem for just $79. And to top it off you can bundle 12GB of data for just $199 and it will last you for 12 months. This is much cheaper than a 1GB monthly contract from most providers.

3 Mobile’s prepaid recharge options start at $15 for 500MB, 2GB for $29, 4GB for $49 and 12GB for $149. In addition, you also get 10 free SMS and your data lasts for 30 days except for the 12GB plan which lasts for a year. Are they good value? I think they are. Optus is currently offering 1GB for $30, 3.45GB for $50 and at the top end, 9.2GB for $130 lasting only 186 days. So yes, I think 3 Mobile’s value is good. Where it could be better is in a few more options for those people looking to spend between $50 and $150. So it would be nice to see maybe a 9GB plan introduced.

Is 3 Mobile broadband good for regional Australia. It’s improving but at the moment for best results I would either look at Telstra or Optus (or an Optus reseller eg Exetel). If you travel into the city mainly or if you live in the suburbs around major Australian cities, 3 Mobile should be fine. You can check the 3 Mobile coverage map here.

3 Mobile has made some important changes to its prepaid mobile cap plans. The changes include an increase to the 30sec call rate for the $69 and $99 Cap Plans. They are now 44c per 30 secs. Text rate has also increased across the board to 28c per text from 25c.

The cost for data has also fallen slightly for the $69 & $99 prepaid caps.

Other changes have impacted the free credit for each plan. The $29 Cap plans offered $310 in total value, it now offers $300, $49 Cap increased from $590 total value to $700, $69 Cap increased from $1000 to $1100 and the $99 Cap reduced from $2750 to $1650.

You can check out full details of the 3 Mobile prepaid offer here.