I just upgraded my phone, and the guy told me that he had us on the best contract, but I just got a call from EE and they put me and the Mrs on cheaper contracts, with 4G and much more data allowance.

Can I look forward to something fantastic, or will there be no change?

I was using 4G the other day on my work stuff and was seeing a download speed of 30Mb down and 15Mb up reliably around a city centre.

Not had much chance to test it outside of a city as yet though so not sure how much coverage you will get.

We’ve been running a trial site in Cumbria on 4G for almost a year now. It’s an office populated with between 4 and 8 people, they all have desktops and download/upload CAD documents all day long all over a single 4G router. The site is in one of the most isolated parts of cumbria down a very long and steep sided valley and traditionally has always had very poor network capability. The leased line is 8 miles long and if it’s up, will give us about 256k. When it’s up that is.

The 4G provision has been absolutely faultless. Really strong signal, 30Mbps easy. if I turned up tomorrow to turn it off they’d fight me for it. Granted it’s probably not well contended at the moment but even so, our experiences are extremely positive.

Not unsurprisingly, EE are taking advantage of this success to attempt to lever their way into our good books and grab some of our network contracts.

Me, in Spain, and it’s noticeably faster. Not quite in the same league as the jump when 3G came in (or when you have a 3G connection drop down to E or G…), but still nice and I wouldn’t want a phone without it now.

I guess there must be some pretty good deals right now for EE, desperately trying to get people to switch, while they still have a monopoly? Certainly seen a lot of TV adverts.
Seems crazy that UK is so far behind most of the rest of EU for 4G (although the reasons are well known). Had LTE here for 3-4 years. But then I’ve been to other EU capital cities and not even been able to roam on 3G.

Samuri, I would love to be able to replace our frankly SHIT home broadband with 4G.. do you reckon they give out such deals to consumers?

Barely get a reliable 3g signal in the wilderness that is Aberdeen. No chance of a 4g signal here.

Been running a 4G contract since april.

great when you get it, dont get it at home though (Near Bath) however when its got 4G its quicker than my Wifi!

🙂

Looks like about half my London train journey would be covered by 4G

I guess there must be some pretty good deals right now for EE, desperately trying to get people to switch, while they still have a monopoly?

Oh no there aren’t.

I’m stuck on my £21 Flext from T-Mobile because EE’s 4G tariffs are so terrible. At least on Flext 0800 / 0845 / 0870 and international calls come out of the allowance, so with 3GB of data I rarely pay more than the base price, and I budget a tenner a month for data abroad, which I use for Skype calling.

I’d be looking at paying over £50/month for a similar deal on 4G. Oh, and it’s largely pointless because although the phone I have is apparently 4G capable (according to the Carphone Warehouse website), it’s not running the right software – which they don’t mention.

well interestingly I have a 3GB 4G contract with EE, but ive had a 6GB allowance since April…..

Well I was sold £26.67/mo for unlimited calls and 500MB data, no 4G. The guy who called me put me on 1000 minutes and 2GB data, AND 4G, for £25.

4G here in Oz is noticeably faster than our maxed out ADSL 2+, and we’re only about a km from the exchange.

Simialrly to Molgrips I’m currently with Orange and its upgrade time. I was effectively told by the operator that it was cheaper to switch to EE rather than renew my contract with Orange.

Not made a decision yet but EE sounds like it could be promising as I rarely get 3G coverage with Orange at the moment.

el_tell you do realise that if you don’t get 3G now you wont get 4G either?

EE’s “monopoly” will continue for a good while yet – they are already at 60% population coverage on 4G and pushing for 98% by the end of next year.

By contrast, o2 and Vodafone have basically pushed back their launch dates to the autumn despite all the initial noise about being held back by the license process. o2 has only just got to 90% 3G coverage after 10 years of network rollout, so their and Vodafone’s plan for 98% indoor coverage on 4G by the end of 2015 look like wishful thinking given that they’ve upgraded few (if any) transmission sites.

The wild card is 3 – who have been rolling out high speed 3G to 60% of the population and could yet do something on 4G short term with EE via their MBNL joint venture until they get their national rollout sorted – they already have the backhaul in place, so have a lot less work to do than Voda or o2 who still have many sites without backhaul that would support 3G let alone 4G.

Samuri, I would love to be able to replace our frankly SHIT home broadband with 4G.. do you reckon they give out such deals to consumers?

Not yet. You may have better luck, ahem, some time in August.

you do realise that if you don’t get 3G now you wont get 4G either?

Not true. 4G has a much wider coverage per transmitter as well as being far more effective at using what bandwidth is available including dual homing to multiple transmitters and providing greater bandwidth to larger demand.

Some good speeds OP!

I can’t get decent 3G let alone 4G! (Location)

4G would allow me to cancel my landline and broadband.

el_tell you do realise that if you don’t get 3G now you wont get 4G either?

I suppose what I meant was I dont get v good 3G coverage with Orange a lot of the time. Possibly due to my old phone or their shonky network.

The operator mentioned that as Orange/Tmobile/EE are part of the same family & EE is slowly being bought in a few mobile masts in certain areas were being taken down to accommodate the new EE masts. Therefore coverage on EE should in theory be betterer 🙂

I concede he could have been BS’ing me though…

MrsBouy took an upgrade from Orange to EE on a Blackberry Q10. She’s never been a massive browser bird but seems to stream more music and use her Maps more than she ever did before. I tested the upload in Canary Wharf and it was super quick, down on the coast though and it’s back to more random signal coverage.

I’m on 3, I’ll wait until 2015 before I get a decent 3G signal, 4G? I expect that just before apocalypse 😆

The wild card is 3 – who have been rolling out high speed 3G to 60% of the population and could yet do something on 4G short term with EE via their MBNL joint venture until they get their national rollout sorted – they already have the backhaul in place, so have a lot less work to do than Voda or o2 who still have many sites without backhaul that would support 3G let alone 4G.

That coverage doesn’t extend to the populated areas of North Wiltshire. I’ve got a 3 card in my old iPhone, and getting any kind of signal around Chippenham, for example, is truly hit-or-miss. You’d think an expanding commuter town sat on major trunk and railway routes with large business parks would be a shoo-in for coverage, but it’s frankly crap.

CountZero What network are you with? I’m with EE (Personal) and 02 Work and neither are great in and around Corsham!

Just watch the data limits on 4g. I’m on threes one plan (unlimited data). I reckon super fast downloads with a sub 5gb monthly allowance can only end in tears or HUGE added data costs.

I’m unlikely to download anything I woulnd’t otherwis ebe downloading.

I’m unlikely to download anything I woulnd’t otherwis ebe downloading.

Yeah, but you might be tempted to do more of it, if it comes quicker.

I’ve just got (today) an unlimited 3G sim only deal with T Mobile for £16.00 per month.
That’s calls, texts and data.

Not strictly relevant, but I’m very happy with it.

Superb customer service from Sam at the Bury shop.

Given it’s a new network and so still under utilised, I’d expect much better speeds than 3G just by virtue of the fact you’re sharing the base station capacity with fewer people. Give it a few years though and it will drop down to near 3G speeds as it loads up with users. The difference in capacity, on a fully loaded network, between 3G and 4G isn’t that great (from simulations I’ve seen reported on at conferences).

I’d be happy if I could send a text from my house. 4G is pretty distant dream for me

19Mbps down, 4.5Mbps up. Ping between 60 and 80ms. Would have hoped for better ping but it feels responsive.

My dads place in Germany doesn’t have broadband. Relies purely on 4G.
Fantastic service. Cheaper and faster than my virgin connection here!

my vodafone 3G signal is so crap even in london I certainly wont bother getting it through them

to be honest Im on a 13 quid a month tarrif and unless the price is the same I dont see much point, phones got memory card so dont stream stuff browsings fine when out-which i dont do enough of to ever go over my limit and use wifi at home and work

Sprisingly I’m getting 3G on the IoW…

Thought crayon and paper was the hight of tech here. ..

I’ve got 4G on my iPad with EE. It is fast. I’ve had anything from 20-50mb.

I should add that those figures I got with 2 bars signal. With 1 bar I got 5 up and 0.5 down, which isn’t too shabby.

I’ll see what it can do closer to the city.

I don’t think I’d bother with 4G if it was going to cost me more, unless I was getting a dongle. This package is actually cheaper than my 3G one and includes double the data allowance. I’m going to get rid of my dongle I think and use my phone tethered (with it plugged into the computer for power) and then I’ll get 4G for my laptop, which is what I really want.

4G out in the sticks of Western Australia? No bloody chance. My broadband is barely 12. It’s something I really miss from the UK having had Virgin and 50mb broadband. Still, the sun shines in winter so, mushn’t grrrrumble!

I use it with EE on my phone, but I’m afraid I’m not sad enough to work out the speed.

crikey – Member
I use it with EE on my phone, but I’m afraid I’m not sad enough to work out the speed.

Just sad enough to post in a thread you have no interest in? x

Why do you think I have no interest in it?

I simply don’t measure the speed and regard it as a bit sad.

But thanks for your concern

Why sad? I am just curious to see if there is a difference with a different technology. Downloaded an app to tell me, took about 20s.

It’s a bit too geeky for me. I’ve got a phone that works on 4G, I don’t need to know how fast it is, or compare it with others.

Downloaded an app to tell me, took about 20s.

See? That’s the bit I don’t want to do; downloading an app to tell me how quickly I can download an app. Life’s too short, especially at my age, to be concerned with such stuff.