Well, well, well. It’s been a rocky road, but we now officially have a 4G network in the UK, thanks to Orange and T-Mobile’s EE.
EE’s 4G service is initially available across 11 cities – one more than promised at the beginning of the month. Good stuff.
The lucky cities for now are Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield and finally Southampton, the latter being activated sooner than expected.
Belfast, Derby, Hull, Nottingham and Newcastle will join the UK 4G party before Santa arrives, taking the total to 16 cities.
With EE’s 4G network expected to expand at a rate of 2,000 square miles per month, we’re told coverage will reach a whopping 98% before the end of 2014.
Handsets available on EE’s 4G are the iPhone 5, Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 (soonish), Huawei Ascend P1 LTE, HTC One XL, Samsung Galaxy Note II and Samsung Galaxy S III.
Users will be able to watch live TV without buffering and “download high-definition movies in minutes”.
Of course, that’s assuming they can afford the lofty price plans. You won’t get many (i.e. any) high-definition movies with 500MB (£36 per month), while the 8GB offering is a wallet-punching £56 per month.
. I get the feeling EE won't be getting many private customers who can't just write their phone usage off as an expense.
