Everything Everywhere and BT Wholesale have expanded their LTE trial in Cornwall, UK. The trial has seen the two companies collaborate to provide wireless broadband to 180 customers living in and around St. Newlyn East in Cornwall since October 2011. The extension until the end of June 2012 has been granted by Ofcom to enable the companies to continue to investigate the application of 4G LTE in rural areas.
The LTE trialists are currently achieving an average download speed of 7 Mbps.
Olaf Swantee, CEO, Everything Everywhere, said: “The rollout of 4G will help drive economic growth and create jobs across the UK by making the economy more competitive, by enabling businesses to be more productive, and by allowing consumers to benefit from the latest mobile innovations. This trial has been key in investigating ways to rapidly bring 4G LTE to Britain, and Ofcom is helping us do the groundwork to accelerate the UK from laggard to leader.�?http://everythingeverywhere.com
- In December 2011, Everything Everywhere, the joint venture that operates the networks for T-Mobile (UK) and Orange (UK), outlined plans to invest more than £1.5bn+ over the next three years to upgrade its infrastructure and set the stage for LTE. Capex will see double digit growth in 2012 network investment compared to 2011.
The plans will bring tighter integration of the T-Mobile and Orange mobile networks. Everything Everywhere said it is in the final stages of “the big switch on�?. In the next few week, Orange and T-Mobile customers will be able to use 2G and 3G signals from either of the networks and benefit from fast data speeds in more places. In the first half of 2012, Everything Everywhere will further improve the cross-network signal sharing by enabling Orange and T-Mobile customers’ devices to automatically select the stronger signal from either network if their own signal is weak.