EE, the UK’s largest cellco by subscribers, has revealed that it ended 2014 with a total of 7.7 million 4G subscribers on its books, far ahead of the target of six million it had set itself for that date. With the operator noting that it had signed up a total of 5.7 million customers to its LTE-based services in the twelve months to end-2014, it highlighted the fact that 1.7 million of those were added in the last two months of the year alone; such growth, it claimed, meant that it had added more 4G customers in the year than any other European operator.
Alongside the high level of uptake, EE said it had also ‘continued to drive record network expansion across the year’, while introducing more accessible 4G tariffs and handsets. During 2014 EE said it had added 350 more cities and towns to its network footprint, with more than 200 of those added in the last quarter of 2014. Such expansion meant that it now offers coverage of 510 UK towns and cities with more than 10,000 people representing more than 80% of the nation’s population. Meanwhile, with an increasing focus on more rural areas, EE noted that it had also added more than 1,000 villages and small towns in the last few months of 2014, taking the total to 3,894 villages and small towns covered.