EE has announced a 318,000 strong 4G user base within its Q1 013 reports, after just five months of launching its 4GEE network.
It is the first time that the 4G network provider has provided customer numbers since it launched the 4GEE service in October last year.
Aiming to reach 1 million customers by the end of this year, EE has said it is “firmly on track” to meet its “ambitious target”.
“Today’s results are in-line with our expectations, and we are making good progress focusing on high value segments,” said Neal Milsom, CFO at EE. “We’re announcing 318,000 4G customers after just five months of trading, strong postpaid net adds and continued growth in our underlying average revenue per user.”
In the Ofcom mobile spectrum auction, EE was given expanded bandwidth, acquiring 36 per cent of the UK mobile spectrum. The network provider plans to roll out the 4G signal to over half the UK population by June.
“We expect to strengthen our industry leadership position in the year ahead as the 4G roll out continues and we introduce double-speed 4GEE.”
Such a double-speed 4G connection will provide EE customers with headline speeds of up to 80Mbps, whilst the average speeds would be boosted to more than 20Mbps by the summer in bigger cities.
Currently the only 4G network provider, EE customers signing up to the 4GEE signal receive approximately five times faster mobile broadband speeds than 3G, with average speeds of 16Mbps and peak speeds of 50Mbps.
The other 4G auction winners were O2, Vodafone, Niche Spectrum Ventures (a BT Group subsidiary) and Hutchinson 3G UK who own Three. Customers can expect superfast broadband from these new 4G network providers within the next six months, with Ofcom confirming the entire British population would have access to 4G signals by the end of 2017 “at the latest”.
