Vodafone Hutchison Australia has formally shut down its 3 mobile brand, four years after the merger between Vodafone Australia and Hutchison Australia.
The last remaining 3 customers were disconnected at Midnight on Friday, according to a company announcement.
Disconnected customers will have to move to the Vodafone Australia network or to another provider. They will have six months to port their existing numbers.
Australia's mobile number portability facilities are already under strain because wholesale mobile reseller ispONE recently entered voluntary administration after a dispute with provider Telstra.
The move has forced MVNO Kogan Mobile to stop offering services, leaving 120,000 customers needing to port to a new provider.
VHA said it had been informing 3 customers of the planned shutdown via email, TXT, voicemail, calls, website messages, Facebook updates and other means. The company had set the August deadline in June.
But the shutdown had been foreshadowed ever since Vodafone Australia and Hutchison Australia agreed to establish 50:50 joint venture VHA back in 2009.
VHA stopped signing up new 3 customers in 2011. One year later, the company shut down the 3GIS network it had been sharing with Telstra