Vodafone And Telefonica To Spread 4G Together

Vodafone and Telefonica UK, parent company of O2, have announced their intention to pool together their basic network infrastructure, creating a national grid of 18,500 sites that will provide wider coverage of 4G for customers when it arrives.

The two partners are currently engaged in discussions with Ofcom to create a joint-venture company to which these resources will be transferred to, but both companies are keen to stress they will operate independently and compete with each other.

The agreement comes after Everything Everywhere announced last month it had completed its Smart Signal project, which allows customers of T-Mobile and Orange to use both brands’ networks.

Working together

Ownership of the new joint-venture will be shared equally and will be created through the consolidation of infrastructure such as towers and masts, which will be transferred over time. Users of both networks will have access to roughly 40 percent more sites, although around ten percent could be reduced as a result of decommissioning in duplicate sites. Where duplication remains, each network’s mobile traffic will use its own infrastructure.

The company will be responsible for the building of new sites needed to extend coverage into rural and remote areas, but each company will assume the responsibility for the design, management and maintainence of the radio equipment and local transmission in one half of the country. Telefonica will do this in the east, which oddly includes Northern Ireland and much of Scotland, and Vodafone in the west, including Wales.

Vodafone and Telefonica claim that the partnership will ensure that 4G mobile services are rolled out as widely as possible, helping to close the digital divide, and will achieve 98 percent coverage two years ahead of the anticipated Ofcom target of 2017. Both operators will retain complete control over their spectrum, intelligent core networks and customer data and will be responsible for securing their own bandwidth in the upcoming auction of 4G spectrum.

“This partnership will close the digital divide for millions of people across the country and power the next phase of the smartphone revolution,” said Guy Laurence, CEO Vodafone UK. “This partnership will improve the service that customers receive today and give Britain the 4Gnetworks that it will need tomorrow.”

“This partnership is about working smarter as an industry, so that we can focus on what really matters to our customers – delivering a superfast network up to two years faster than Ofcom envisages and to as many people as possible,” added Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica UK. “One physical grid, running independent networks, will mean greater efficiency, fewer site builds, broader coverage and, crucially, investment in innovation and better competition for the customer.”

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