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Angie promises disruptive 10Gbps broadband and ‘5G wireless’ for the UK

Dutch start-up Angie has announced intentions to launch 10Gbps fibre broadband and so-called ‘5G wireless’ services in the UK. 

Though its services aren’t due to launch until next year, Angie promises to disrupt the British market with next generation speeds. 

Ultrafast 10Gbps FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) fixed-line services will be made available to 3 million premises across the UK, while 4G LTE-Advanced mobile services will be made available to 95 per cent of the population. 

This 3 million-wide fibre network will also serve as the backbone for what Angie is calling its 5G wireless service. 

Related: EE’s LTE-Advanced average speeds outstrip BT’s FTTC headline rateNot to be confused with 5G mobile services – the international standards for which still haven’t been defined – Angie’s 5G wireless promises to reach around 90 per cent of the population. 

It’s currently not very clear on exactly how Angie intends to do all this, but its press blurb imagines a future where ‘you can access the Internet from anywhere anytime from any device at perfect quality’ through a ‘seamless combination’ of mobile, wireless and fixed-line broadband. 

Angie also promises to ‘leapfrog’ the incumbent providers outdated services, so presumably this means it won’t be making use of BT’s Openreach network to sell services to customers across the UK. 

Exactly whereabouts in the country Angie will be delivering its services first isn’t clear. It’s likely that high density areas will get the fixed-line services, with scattered rural populations benefiting from mobile and wireless services.  

Given that EE wants to deliver 4G to 99 per cent of the population by 2017 means that Angie’s got its work cut out for it. 

The plucky start-up intends to bid for slices of the 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz spectrum in an future auction and may bid for some 6GHz action too – if Ofcom decides to open that up for mobile services. Angie is also lobbying for the higher frequency millimetre wave band to be used for 5G services. 

Previous experiments with would-be 5G services have seen companies including Samsung, Ericsson and the UK’s own 5G Innovation Centre deliver gigabit (1,000Mbps) and even terabit (1,000,000Mbps) speeds to speeds to stationary and moving targets in trials.  

Depending on the technology used, Angie’s 5G wireless service could equal or exceed the 10Gbps speeds available on its fixed-line footprint. 

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