Everything Everywhere campaigns to push 4G forward

There has been a fair bit of controversy surrounding the campaign by Everything Everywhere (the lovechild of a merger between T-Mobile and Orange) to bring forward the release of 4G in the UK. Last month, rival network providers successfully postponed Ofcom’s request for submission of final comments or grievances before the spectrum auctions in 2013.

This was a decent victory for the likes of Vodafone, O2 and Three, all of whom fear that EE are trying to monopolise the highly-anticipated 4G wireless networks. However, EE have now retaliated by putting together a ‘not for profit’ campaign in a bid to release 4G up to a year earlier than their competitors.

The campaign – 4GBritain.org – claims to have the backing of the likes of Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, eBay and technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch. The campaign’s circular reads:

“The coalition supports bringing 4G LTE to the UK as soon as possible, by ensuring the spectrum auctions and release of new spectrum is not delayed further and existing mobile spectrum can be freed up for 4G LTE.”

Most of us here in the UK would welcome 4G sooner rather than later. Seeing as it’s already available in such diverse countries as Hong Kong and Angola, it should be considered a shame on the nation that we’ve fallen so far behind with the implementation of this powerful technology.

[Source: The Guardian]