Vodafone Adds Five Southern Towns To 4G Network

Vodafone is adding Basingstoke, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Reading and Swindon to its 4G network, meaning that an additional one million people and 35,000 businesses can now receive LTE.

The five new towns and cities – all located in the south of England – will bring the total number of Vodafone 4G locations to 239, delivering superfast mobile broadband services to 500,000 subscribers.

“Mobile connectivity plays a vital role in keeping communities in touch and helping to support the local economy,” says Fergal Kelly, CTO at Vodafone UK. “Our network improvements will ensure thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of consumers in the south of England will have a better opportunity to take part in the growing smartphone revolution, whether they are at work, at home or on holiday.”

Vodafone 4G

However it is worth noting that Vodafone has not revealed too many specific locations among the 239 towns and cities, raising the possibility that it has bulked the list up by including multiple settlements within or alongside large conurbations. For example, Vodafone appears to count Brighton and Hove as separate locations despite their proximity and also distinguishes between Gateshead and Jarrow.

In contrast EE claims to have 215 towns and cities covered by its 4G network and to cover 72 percent of the UK population with LTE as it appears to be stricter about what constitutes a 4G settlement. Indeed, any of the locations EE claims is a 4G location must have at least 80 percent coverage before it can be considered fully connected.

O2 claims it has 191 towns and cities covered by its 4G network but has just 33 percent indoor coverage and 41 percent outdoors, making it likely it is bulking up this figure in a similar fashion to Vodafone.

4G rollout forms a significant part of Vodafone’s £1 billion investment into its UK network, which will see its 2G, 3G and 4G infrastructure upgraded and 150 new shops opened, creating 1,400 jobs. The Newbury, Berkshire based firm recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Vodafone brand and announced plans to invest £19 billion across all of its worldwide networks in the next two years.

Are you up to speed on 4G? Try our quiz!

Steve McCaskill

Steve McCaskill is editor of TechWeekEurope and ChannelBiz. He joined as a reporter in 2011 and covers all areas of IT, with a particular interest in telecommunications, mobile and networking, along with sports technology.

View Comments

  • Help - my iPhone for the last day and now has No Service - in Pangbourne Berkshire. To find yr Landline is so difficult on line . Both our Vodafone phones don't work.
    Has tr System Failed ?
    Please advise what's going on
    My mobile is 0xxxxxxxxxx
    Hope to hear v soon

    David Mattingly

    • Welcome to the Internet, David. Two points:

      1. We are in no way affiliated with Vodafone, and we don't provide any kind of technical support.

      2. It's a REALLY BAD IDEA to post your real name, email address or telephone number online. Safety reasons.

Recent Posts

UK’s CMA Readies Cloud Sector “Behavioural” Remedies – Report

Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector

13 hours ago

Former Policy Boss At X Nick Pickles, Joins Sam Altman Venture

Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…

16 hours ago

Bitcoin Rises Above $96,000 Amid Trump Optimism

Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…

17 hours ago

FTX Co-Founder Gary Wang Spared Prison

Judge Kaplan praises former FTX CTO Gary Wang for his co-operation against Sam Bankman-Fried during…

18 hours ago