If you’re fed up with having to deal with rubbish WiFi in airport lounges you’ll be pleased to hear that EE has switched on 4G in Heathrow, Gatwick and 16 other UK airports.
As well as this, EE has revealed the next 14 towns and cities that will benefit from its up to 300Mbps speeds and announced plans to improve coverage along stretches of the UK’s rail networks.
Olaf Swantee, CEO at EE, said: “More towns right across the UK now have access to the country’s biggest 4G network, and more people can use it where they need it most – in airports and on the busiest commuter routes.”
As well as letting people check emails after they’ve checked in, Swantee says that the rollout is also about improving voice calls in busy places.
Swantee added: “Our network investment in 2014 is not just about giving people faster mobile data – phone calls are still an incredibly important part of the mobile experience, and we’re investing to ensure that people travelling all over the UK can make phone calls in more places and with better quality than ever before.”
To be fair, having to overhear someone struggle to have a conversation on the train is about as fun as morons recreating that Trigger Happy TV sketch aren’t. So even if you’re not an EE customer yourself, you can be thankful for this.
EE hasn’t announced when it will begin its railside expansion but has revealed that the first stage will improve 4G coverage along the line from London Euston to Birmingham New Street. The second stage will extend north to Manchester and Liverpool, and south from London Victoria to Brighton. Stage three will reach Glasgow by the end of the year.
The airports where EE has unfurled its 4G tendrils include Stansted, Luton, London City, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool John Lennon, Bristol, Nottingham East Midlands, Leeds-Bradford, Belfast International, George Best Belfast City, Blackpool and the now Twitter-infamous Robin Hood Airport in Nottingham.
The 14 latest towns and cities to get EE 4G are Belper, Cannock, Ellesmere Port, Grangemouth, Harrogate, Hartlepool, Keighley, Motherwell, Paignton, Richmond (North Yorkshire), Skelmersdale, Torquay and Widnes.
Since launch, EE 4G has arrived in 174 towns and cities. EE’s 4G network now covers 70 per cent of the UK population. EE has stated it wants to make 4G available to 98 per cent of the UK’s population by the end of the year – 12 months before all the networks are obligated to do so.
Ofcom allowed EE to launch 4G services before Vodafone, O2 and Three ahead of the long-awaited 4G spectrum auction.
Image: Jim Linwood/Flickr
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