Rural homes and offices in part of Cumbria will be able to use EE’s 4G mobile network as an alternative to fixed-line broadband from next month.

EE is expanding its rural broadband trial in the northern part of the Lake District to cover more than 100 square miles, where it’ll offer ‘superfast’ broadband speeds to over 2,000 residents and businesses for the first time.

Mark Bridge writes:

We started last week with a change of plan from BlackBerry. No, it’s not selling itself to Fairfax Financial. Instead it’s aiming to raise $1 billion from investors. Cynics might suggest there wasn’t enough interest for a takeover.

EE has announced a series of exceptionally large mobile data bundles for businesses including broadcasters and other media organisations.

It’s created a series of 4G data tariffs that can be shared and have no fixed-term contract or expiry date, with bundle sizes from 50 terabytes to 1 petabyte (1 million GB).

Ofcom has published the results of its assessment into whether or not the UK’s ‘big four’ mobile phone networks have met their 3G coverage obligations.

Although the 3G 2100MHz mobile spectrum licences originally only required networks to cover 80% of the UK population with 3G service, the government later increased this obligation to 90% population coverage. The deadline for meeting this requirement was 30th June 2013.

Earlier this year EE introduced its double-speed 4G service to the Tech City area of London, offering mobile data speeds of up to 30Mbps.

It’s now bringing what it describes as the “world’s fastest mobile network” to the East London tech hub. LTE-Advanced technology is expected to deliver up to 300Mbps next year.