In October of last year, Everything Everywhere because the first company in the United Kingdom to roll out a 4G LTE network. More than six months later, we have yet to see another carrier brave the 4G waters, despite the fact that Ofcom's 4G LTE spectrum auction wrapped up in February. Three UK has said it will likely be the end of the year before it rolls out a 4G network, but O2 is promising a "mind-blowingly aggressive" rollout.
Speaking to TechRadar, Gary Booker, Consumer General Manager at O2, said that the company was aware EE had quite a head start and so was looking to deliver 4G pretty quickly.
"We will have a very, very accelerated roll out of 4G, it's mind-blowingly aggressive compared to our UK 3G rollout," TechRadar quotes him as saying. "We are going to have a very, very fast rollout of 4G. Sure EE is going to be ahead of us, sure we'll be playing catch up - there will be some months where we'll be doing that."
Booker said O2 would be offering more details on its 4G plans a couple of months down the line, during the summertime. However, he also said that while EE had done a good job deploying its 4G early, he didn't think the company had traction in the market.
O2, Three, Vodafone, and EE all bought spectrum in Ofcom's auction, along with Niche Spectrum Ventures (a BT Group subsidiary), so EE won't have the market to itself for much longer (nor will it be the only competitor O2 has to worry about).
