2 Million customers, coverage approaching 70% of the population

https://explore.ee.co.uk/our-company...ke-accelerates

As i thought though, over 1.3m of those customers were originally on a T-Mobile or Orange line.

But still a very impressive number and one I did not expect them to hit so early. Guess PAYG really does matter.

Must be close to being Europe's largest 4G network surely. Once they get those Cities they announced as live before Christmas actually fully covered (next week ish) they will have 70% or just slightly higher than 70% 4G population coverage.

Three.. Your up next. Tomorrow?


Side note when will O2 & Voda release 4G sign ups figures next?

I just joined myself this week as a stop gap until 3 get up and going in Bristol.

Then on the other hand if I can keep getting 6 GB double speed PAYG data sims with 3 month expiry on E-Bay for £17 I might hang around on EE a bit longer.

I'm sure it is in terms of customer base. EE should be over 70% by the end of Jan based on what I've been told. Very impressive. But this is where the real challenge begins.


Probably first week of February.

Given Three claims to have about 1.5/1.6m 4G-ready devices being used by subscribers, it won't now be able to claim to have more 4G users than EE - but having one and a half million on the 'first day' will still be quite impressive - even if we're talking about those who have a 4G phone and can use 4G, but won't actually be anywhere near a 4G covered area for some time.

If O2 is now letting people on some tariffs migrate to 4G for free, I guess it will be able to claim some impressive numbers (especially if it simply upgrades people automatically rather than asking). Maybe Vodafone will be left in last place unless it does something similar?

But, as a consumer, who cares? It's more for analysts and shareholders to worry about than anyone else. In fact, as someone with an EE 4G broadband account and finding speeds dropping in many places, not getting faster, I'd actually prefer it if EE only had one 4G customer - me!

There isn't a date for this as such as customer numbers by technology are not part of the KPIs released by Vodafone or Telefonica as a group and these should be consistent across all of their businesses. Vodafone UK customer totals will be available in the group release on 7 Feb and O2 as part of Telefonica's release on 27 Feb. EE is different as it reports it's own numbers.

What happens in practice though is if they want to highlight a particular number like 4G subs is either for the local business to make a separate announcement (like Three often does) or to drop it into one of the Group presentation slides like Vodafone did last time (it said it passed 200k in November). You can't rely on this happening though and this quarter is a minor one for Vodafone so they don't say much where as for O2 it's year end. It might also depend on how good the number is of course.

O2 have been deliberately coy, which was what EE did early on as well. Vodafone already announced they hit 200K customers within 2 months of launch.

3 have 2800 since launch Actually if some reports here are anything to go by not even all the 2800 launch triallists actually have access yet.

I notice the Plymouth 4G map has improved over the Saltash area. Wonder if it'll enhance further in the weeks ahead...

Based on what?

The only reason EE's 4G network is so much "bigger" than other UK operators is because they had a year's head start.

Yet, Germany held their auction in 2010 and Vodafone Germany had a further two year headstart over EE.

Based on population coverage (persons), Vodafone Germany covered 50 million people in April 2013, EE's coverage today is only around 44 million people. So by that metric, it's still a lot smaller than Vodafone Germany was nearly a year ago.

Based on population percentage, Vodafone Germany had 60% in April last year with the target of over 75% by today. EE's still smaller, especially if you compare geographical coverage in Germany:
http://www.vodafone.de/privat/mobile...abdeckung.html Then there's Sweden, who achieved 99% population early last year, including 60% population coverage of 2600Mhz.

In terms of cities? EE claims 160 "towns and cities" Vodafone DE claims 160 major cities + numerous more towns.

Anyway. Point being EE are far ahead of other networks in the UK that it had a headstart on but far behind other networks in Europe that had a headstart on it.

Up to Q2 of 2013 Germany as a whole (ie all 4G networks there) had only signed up 0.9 million customers to LTE.
Sweden 1.1 million..
Source

Add in EE being one of the Fastest growing networks in terms of Coverage, User base and penetration in Europe, they were also the fastest tech wise (kinda still are if you count the Tech City >public< trial) and have the cheapest 4G Tarrifs in Europe at this time.. Trials excluded mind

And the same figures show the UK had even less at the time - 0.7 million.

Right now though, it is no longer Q2 2013. As of November 2013, Vodafone Germany had 1.84 million LTE subscribers. EE didn't release details in November but announced in October 2013 they had 1.2 million. Given that 2013 saw similar average growth for both networks (137k per month vs 140k per month), there's no evidence Vodafone Germany isn't still ahead today.

Bare in mind i said "Must be close to being Europe's largest 4G network surely"
I am indeed right in that assumption as you have proved and also I'm being told they are likely to surpass.

You are correct in them being close to or one of the networks with the highest absolute number of 4G subscribers. Which I suppose is the topic of this thread.

But then you immediately followed on in the same paragraph with a number of references to the network's "size" in respect to their population coverage. So it appeared you were referring to the "largeness" of the network in terms of coverage footprint. I did specifically ask what metric you were basing your "largest" reference to, but you never answered. So I assumed population coverage since that's what you were talking about to begin with, and, as has been mentioned elsewhere, coverage is a meaningful, tangible thing that directly affects the actual customer experience whereas subscriber counts really don't and are just a PR thing.

EE may come close in terms of absolute number of 4G subscribers - but not in terms of coverage by area, coverage by population percentage, penetration, or revenue, especially not compared to networks who launched several years earlier. For physical coverage, EE are well ahead of networks that launched later and well behind networks that launched earlier. Which is no surprise.

As for subscriber numbers, how close they are depends on how old the figures are you want to use.

The most closely dated figures we have are 1.2m for EE and 1.84m for Vodafone DE in October and November last year respectively. That's not "close" in my book.

But if you compare January 2014's EE figures with Vodafone DE's November 2013, then it's 2.0m vs. 1.84m. That's close, but Vodafone are less behind there (160k) than EE were in their previous figures (640k). What are the chances EE managed to gain 800k customers in three months while Vodafone fails to gain 160k in two? EE's growth accelerating by 500% as much as VF's despite remaining within about 5% of one another for the twelve months prior? Seems a bit far fetched to me.

In the end however subscriber growth has been fairly similar across networks of similar size/market share in different countries - VF Germany started and ended 2013 with similar numbers of subscribers as EE UK (+/-10% probably) despite one network launching several years earlier. Unsurprisingly, both networks have similar customer numbers too (about 13% difference)

Isn't it extended towards Ivybridge as well?

Dunno - don't venture "that way" lol

Well you don't want to either..
I live in that direction.

I see Exeter has one (possibly two) on now.

Cant really compre UK to germany though, they networks in germany were not allowed to launch 4G in urban areas until the rural areas of the country had coverage.

Much easier to grow numbers faster when you can sell to the densely populated cities v villages.

That's a really good thing not for the networks obviously but making sure the rural areas were properly done first. Nice to see one country puts rural areas first.

I don't think putting rural areas first is a good thing.

We in the UK have a 98% indoor coverage requirement on some networks which OFCOM believe will result in 99%+ outdoor coverage, which has to be complete within a few years.

Now the German tactic was to force the networks to do rural areas first which isn't necessary when the networks are already forced to do rural areas within 2-3 years as they are here - in fact most networks are voluntarily going to cover rural areas well before the deadline.

Urban areas are done first in a free market because you can cover more people with less effort and in less time. That means both the networks benefit faster but also more people can benefit faster.

Also worth noting when i was there 6 months ago the cost of 4G contracts was far higher than what the UK's 4G currently costs and even EE's at the time. So it would be slower (if we ignore different living standards etc)