Tag Archives: EE

5G Comes to UK on EE



5G launched today in six UK cities on the EE mobile network, offering “gigabit” speed levels for mobile device users.

The lucky six cities are London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester, with further rollouts to Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield later in the year. In 2020, ten more towns and cities will get 5G sites, including Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Brighton, Cambridge, Dundee, Exeter, Ipswich, Norwich, Plymouth and York.

The choice of 5G handset is a little limited right now, with only the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G available at launch, though the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, Oppo Reno 5G and LG V50 ThinQ 5G can be pre-ordered at EE. The OnePlus 7 Pro 5G comes in Nebula Blue with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB ROM. Top of the range that.

And Huawei managed to get in on the act too, with a photograph showing that the BBC were using a Huawei antenna for their outside broadcast. (As spotted by The Register).

Below is a video from OnePlus showing a speed test on both a 4G and 5G network. Obviously, the real world data transfer rates will depend on many factors, such as distance from the transmitter and number of 5G phones in the area, but it’s a ten-fold increase in speed. I seem to remember similar promises going from GPRS to 3G and from 3G to 4G, so we’ll see what happens in reality once 5G handsets become the norm.

All the mobile carriers in the UK have said they’ll launch 5G in 2019 in select cities. Vodafone is expected to be next, launching 3 July.


UK’s 4G – Common-sense or Cover-up?



Ofcom LogoThe launch of 4G services in the UK by Everything Everywhere today has been heralded by the majority of the tech blogs and news sites as a long-overdue success. But is this a victory for common-sense or has Ofcom simply managed to cover-up its own incompetence? (For those outside the UK, Ofcom is the regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.)

Here’s part of article from GNC that I wrote in October of last year.
Ofcom, the UK’s regulator for the telecommunications industry, issued an update on its plans for the auctioning off of the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum bands. These are the frequencies that will be used for the delivery of 4G services.

There has already been one consultation on the auction of the frequencies but based on the responses received, Ofcom has decided to carry out an additional second consultation at the end of 2011 which will run for around 8 weeks. The outcome of the consultation and auction proposals will be published in the summer of 2012, with a delayed frequency auction expected in Q4 2012. More likely Q1 2013, based on their track record.”

So how is it possible that Everything Everywhere, or EE, as it is going to be called, can a launch a 4G service when the frequency auction hasn’t even begun?

The answer is that Orange and T-Mobile, the partners in EE, put a proposal to Ofcom that they should be allowed to use one of their existing frequencies (1800 MHz) to launch 4G services in the UK without waiting for the auction. Ofcom thought this was a brilliant idea and gave the go-ahead. As you can imagine, some of the other players in the UK’s telecoms market (Three, Vodafone, O2) were less than thrilled at Ofcom handing EE a 4G monopoly for at least six months. Imagine how tempting it would be to switch networks if a 4G iPhone 5 was available from EE and only EE.

Depending on your point of view, the launch of 4G in the UK is either a victory for a common-sense approach to available spectrum or else it’s a monumental cover-up over the way Ofcom has failed to manage the transition to 4G.

I’m in the latter camp and I won’t be buying a 4G device or service from EE.