Twitter informs me that EE has launched its 4G broadband service in Cumbria. Great. Their press release tells us that their coverage extends over nearly 100 square miles and over 2,000 residents, many of whom are homeworkers.
A quick scan shows that this news is all over tinterweb. For some reason no one other than B4RN sends me press releases so I don’t have a blog post already written about this one :). Not that that is a big deal – most of the stuff out there just regurgitates the press release which ain’t particularly imaginative or value add.
What would be interesting to see is the business case put together within EE for the service. Prices apparently start from £15.99 a month and presumably scale up based on bandwidth consumption. Assuming the take up was in line with the national uptake for broadband (74% in Q1 2011 according to Ofcom) and bearing in mind the lack of competition then that would give EE 1,480 * £16 = £23,680 a month or just shy of £300k a year revenues. I would guess they will be able to make money out of that. I’d also expect users signing up for this service to buy other EE services so I should think the overall revenues will be quite a bit higher.
Out of interest I went into EE’s availability checker it told me that the service wasn’t available in Cumbria yet! I don’t live there anyway!! If I did live in Cumbria I would buy the service and find out what this internet thing is all about.
That’s all…
3 replies on “EE by gum – 4G hits the fells”
To be fair they do have a 4G trial running in Threlkeld (up a bit from your map) and I think they may be differentiating that from standard mobile 4G as it’s effectively fixed wireless broadband using their 1800 MHz spectrum as the new scheme will be.
100 square miles sounds a lot, until you realise it’s only a 10 mile by 10 mile square. Needs a couple of extra base stations apparently.
I just typed in Cumbria in their checker – that’s where the press release said they were doing it 🙂
http://www.northernfellsbroadband.co.uk/pages/eeregister.php