Orange and T-Mobile to spend £1.5bn on beefed-up network
TELECOMS giant Everything Everywhere yesterday announced a £1.5bn investment in integrating its network and preparing for the UK rollout of superfast 4G services.
The expenditure, which will come over the next three years, will help the company, recently formed from Orange and T-Mobile, cope with the explosion in mobile data traffic.
The firm says it is now ready to lay out the world’s most advanced network that will give customers access to the “biggest 3G network and widest 3G coverage” in the UK.
The investment comes ahead of the much-delayed 4G spectrum auction next year, in which the major networks are expected to spend upwards of £3bn on radio-waves to carry superfast mobile signals demanded by data hungry smartphones.
It is understood the firm is also poised to appoint advisers to offload around a quarter of its 2G network, as ordered by the European Commission in the wake of its merger.