United Kingdom wireless operator Everything Everywhere said it has launched commercial LTE services across 11 markets, including the cities of Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield and Southampton. In support of that launch, the carrier also said it now has 700 retail locations selling the Everything Everywhere service.
The carrier, which is a joint venture between France Telecom’s Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile brands formed in 2010, had begun testing LTE services in a handful of markets last month with plans to launch commercial services across 16 markets by the end of the year.
The LTE service is using the carrier’s 1.8 GHz spectrum holdings that were originally restricted for use by GSM-based offerings, though Everything Everywhere recently gained government approval to use a portion of that spectrum for its LTE service. The carrier has also been using its 800 MHz spectrum to trial LTE in select markets, but has yet to gain government approval for commercial services.
Government regulator Ofcom is planning to begin the process of auctioning spectrum in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz band specifically for LTE services later this year. Everything Everywhere rival O2 began LTE trials across portions of London late last year using 2.6 GHz spectrum under a “test and development” license from Ofcom.
Everything Everywhere said it was investing more than $2.4 billion into the rollout of its LTE services, with plans to expand coverage by 2,000 square miles per month and 98% of the population covered by the end of 2014.
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