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 being installed and is expected to deliver up to 300Mbps next year, with this service covering all of London by the end of 2014. A trial scheme for selected companies will be launched in December this year.
However, it’ll only be available on devices that are LTE-A compatible; EE plans a commercial launch of LTE-A routers and handsets in 2014.
Olaf Swantee, EE’s CEO, said “Today we are introducing the next age of 4G mobile technology to the UK. Our existing 4G network delivers incredible mobile data speeds and covers millions of people across the country, but we never stand still. We know that mobile data usage is going to keep increasing, and rapidly so. Our analysts predict that data usage will grow significantly over the next three years. In fact, our trend-mapping shows that data usage is set to rise by 750% in that period, as consumers and companies conduct more of their business and lives on-line.”
“The network we’re switching on today in Tech City uses the spectrum that we acquired in the Ofcom spectrum auction earlier this year, and is the first part of an infrastructure that can meet the future demands of an increasingly data-hungry nation, enabling us to stay one-step ahead of the demand.”
EE’s LTE-Advanced service works by combining 1800MHz spectrum and 2.6GHz spectrum.