O2 Announces it's 4G Offering

Telefonica's UK arm, O2, have today released basic details of their upcoming 4G service which will launch at the end of August this year. For the last few months the only company to offer 4G services in the UK has been Everything Everywhere (EE). Since the auction of the 4G spectrum by ofcom earlier this year the UK has been waiting for the likes of O2, Vodafone and Three to announce details of their offerings. O2 are the first to do so.

Uptake of EE's 4G service has been quite slow with less than 1 million subscribers so far despite a large number of cities having 4G available. This could be due to their high prices and low data caps or people just waiting to see what others offer.

O2's cheapest contract will be £26 per month but they've yet to detail how much data you'll get for this (nobody cares about calls or texts). Hopefully they will learn from EE's mistake.

Importantly, the iPhone 5 will not be available on O2's 4G network unless Apple release version. This could effect uptake too as the iPhone 5 is hugely popular.

Have you been using EE's 4G service or are thinking of getting 4G now that O2 have an offering? Please comment below.

4G Bid Results

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator has today announced the winners of the 4G auction that's been taking place over the last couple of months. There were five winners of the auction; Everything Everywhere (EE), Hutchinson 3G UK Ltd (Three), Niche Spectrum Ventures Ltd (BT), Telefonica UK (O2) and Vodafone.

Between the five bidders £2.3 billion was raised with Vodafone paying for the most bands at a cost of £790 million. This is only 2/3 of the £3.5 billion that the UK government was hoping to get from the bidding process. Everything Everywhere (EE) has struggled to attract users to their existing 4G services which they released a few months ago and the UK government are already makes plans for 5G services to come online in less than ten years time. Is this why the bids are so low?

The bidding breakdown is as follows:

Telefonica (O2) who have won the bid for some of the 800 MHz spectrum are obliged to provide coverage to 98% of the UK population by 2017.

Mobile companies are expected to release their services within the next six months which should create quite a bit of competition on both price and data allowances.

Are you planning on switching to 4G? Are you already on 4G? What do you think? Leave your comments below.

4G Bidders Announced

Ofcom have released the names of the seven companies that will be bidding for the 4G spectrum in the UK, the companies are Three, O2, Vodafone, EE, HKT, MLL, and BT. Bidding will take place in the new year with services expected to start in the spring.