EE Boosts 150Mbps 4G+ With More Spectrum

EE is rolling out more high frequency spectrum to support its ‘4G+’ service, claiming demand for the faster speeds has accelerated as more users adopt ‘CAT6 LTE’ smartphones.

4G+ was launched in London last October and works by pairing the 1800MHz band that forms the basis for EE’s LTE network with the 2.6GHz spectrum it won in the Ofcom auction in 2013.

4G+ data

The operator says real world speeds of 146Mbps have been achieved – near the 150Mbps theoretical limit of the service – with 4G+ customers using on average 4GB of data each month. Sixty percent of all traffic from 4G+ smartphones is from video and many of London’s train stations are the business locations as passengers download content for long train journeys.

4G+ has since been extended to other locations beyond the capital, including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Nottingham, Leeds, Leicester, Oxford, Newcastle and Bristol. The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, launched last week, will be among the handsets that support 4G+

“Now with more 4G+ sites giving double the capacity in the busiest areas, we’re getting even faster for our customers, and that extra capacity means improved reliability for everything you do on your phone,” said EE CTO Fotis Karonis.

EE currently has 10.9 million 4G customers and its LTE network covers 90 percent of the UK. The company, which is set to be acquired by BT for £12.5 billion, has also launched the UK’s first M2M-specific LTE service. EE Connect will be open to all business and public sector customers as it seeks to take advantage of growing demand for the Internet of Things (IoT).

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