EE bags 2.9 million 4G customers but broadband still grows at a crawl

EE has signed up nearly 900,000 more 4G customers in the last three months while its fixed line customer continues to grow slowly. 

Despite EE inching closer to 3 million 4G customers overall, it’s yet to sign up over a million home broadband subscribers. 

As well as traditional ADSL broadband delivered over a copper telephone line, EE also offers FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) broadband packages, providing top download speeds of 38Mbps and 76Mbps. 

EE’s results state that growth of its fixed-line product was driven by ‘attractive combined fixed/mobile promotions’ but it doesn’t detail if the popular promotions were bundles of 4G and superfast broadband. 

Nor do the figures break down how many customers are taking up the superfast fibre-based products, although its revealed that around 4,000 EE customers are stil using dial-up internet services. 

EE broadband is UK’s fifth biggest home internet service by subscriber size. For nearly two years, EE home broadband has been the most complained about of the UK’s big ISPs, generating significantly more moans than the industry average. 

Neal Milsom chief financial officer of EE has announced plans to turn this around, saying that 4G wins would go on to subsides improved customer support. Milsom said: “We signed up nearly 900,000 4G customers in a single quarter, with over one in four new customers opting for EE’s exclusive double speed 4GEE Extra plans.”

“In line with our vision to provide the best network and best service, we’re also further improving customer service across all channels to support our long term growth.”

EE 4GEE Extra plans let subscribers access download speeds of up to 60Mbps and start at £26.99/month. EE network upgrades have seen top speeds climb to 300Mbps, although the great majority of phones, tablets and dongles currently on the market don’t possess the capabilities to access such speeds. 

EE 4G is currently available to 47 per cent of the UK’s population. EE says it’s on track to roll out 4G to 98 per cent of the UK’s population by the end of the year. 

EE ADSL broadband, via BT’s Openreach network, is available to 98.7 per cent of the population while FTTC-based products are available to 54 per cent.