The UK‘s largest mobile operator EE, has announced its Q3 results. With continued mobile postpaid and fixed broadband customer growth, the company has maintained commercial momentum in its third quarter.
The aptly named digital communications company now has the biggest 4G customer base of any mobile operator in Europe and is set to surpass a six million target by the end of the year.
After withdrawing business from mobile phones retailer Phones 4U last month in order to focus on direct customer relationship management, EE is certainly on form, having been independently ranked by RootMetrics as Britain‘s number one overall network for voice, text, data and reliability performance.
In Q3, 1.4 million new 4G customers came on board, the biggest quarterly 4G growth yet for EE. At present, over 75% of the UK population has access to 4G coverage.
4G, the fourth generation of mobile technology is fast becoming something of a prerequisite for mobile phone contracts. While 2G was suitable for making calls and sending text messages, 3G then made it possible to access the internet more efficiently [through mobile phones]. 4G is one better, allowing callers and texters to get online five times as quickly as a 3G user.
On Monday, South Korean companies Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom announced a major new partnership which will seek to develop 5G mobile communications technology.
SK Telecom said on Monday that the two companies had signed a memorandum of understanding to “start joint research on 5G network technology and service development.”
At the World IT Show in South Korea, the companies demonstrated an incredible speed-test of 3.7 gbps. In theory, this would allow users to download a film like The Wolf of Wall Street in 6.48 seconds, on their mobiles.
It‘s expected that the first commercial 5G networks will be rolled out by 2020 and it would not come as a surprise if EE was the first UK mobile operator to offer the advancement to Britons.
