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Major 4G network finally launches in the UK, but national coverage is still some way off, with a planned expansion of 2000 square miles per month
Faster mobile broadband is now available in 11 of the UK's biggest cities, with more set to be connected as Everything Everywhere starts rolling out its EE 4G network.
People in Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield and Southampton can now sign up to one of EE's 4G packages and start using the service. In theory 4G is more than five times quicker than current 3G mobile broadband.
Read more: 4G news | Mobile phone reviews
To coincide with the launch Everything Everywhere, the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK has rebranded all 700 of its high street stores as EE.
The network will now expand by 2,000 square miles every month, with five more cities connected by Christmas. EE said it planned to have 98 per cent of the UK population covered by the end of 2014.
Phones supporting the EE 4G network are limited, with models available from Huawei, Nokia, HTC and Samsung. The Apple iPhone 5 is also compatible with the new faster network.
Rival networks including O2 and Vodafone will be launching 4G networks towards the middle of 2013 following an agreement with communications regulator Ofcom.
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Failed to work for me
I live near Cardiff and so, being excited about the launch of 4G in my area went into the city centre. What a waste of time. I, along with several others, stood on Hayes Island and watched as our service vanished into thin air. Not a peep. Everytime we tried connecting, we all received much the same message, no signal available! The only two good things to emerge from today was it was a sunny day and, the bacon rolls were tasty!
Posted by Steve, 30 Oct 2012
steve in cardiff
what handset did you have? did you have a 4g sim?
Posted by m rowland, 31 Oct 2012
M Rowland
I have an iPhone 5. It was part of an upgrade deal I got. I just took it out of the box, put the SIM card which arrived with it into the handset and thought that would be it. Do I need to tweak the handset settings at all?
Posted by Steve, 01 Nov 2012