EE launched their 4G services on 30th October but other operators have had to wait to get their hands on new spectrum before they can launch their 4G offering. The upcoming spectrum auction will allow all UK operators to bid for the required spectrum to launch these services.

Todays announcement sets out the process involved in bidding for the spectrum, the timetable, the rules for taking part and the reserve price for the spectrum that is to be auctioned. The combined spectrum reserve total has been confirmed as £1.3 billion.

Timetable

The Application Date: 11 December 2012

At this time, the date of 11 December is just a provisional date. The date will be confirmed in two weeks time once the new regulations are in force. The application date is the day on which prospective bidders must submit their applications along with an initial deposit.

Qualification Stage: December

During December, Ofcom will review the applications received to decide who has been successful in going forward to the next stage of being allowed to bid in the auction.

The Principal Stage: January

This is when the bidding will begin. Bids are to be made online over secure connections using software that has been specifically designed for the 4G auction process.

The assignment stage & the grant stage: February/March

During February and March, successful bidders will be told what spectrum they have won and the cost of this spectrum. The grant stage is when successful bidders will need to pay the license fees at which point the licenses will be granted to the winning bidders.

The launch stage: May/June

This is when 4G services are expected to go live from a range of providers who were successful in the spectrum auction.

It is likely that we will not hear any updates until the assignment and grant stage in February/March at which point we will learn who has been successful and how big a piece of the pie they have won.

We expect the main bidders in the auction process to include O2, Vodafone, Three and EE. Although EE already have a 4G service available, they will still want to acquire some of the new spectrum on offer at the 800MHz and 2600MHz frequencies. EE’s current 4G service sits somewhere int he middle at 1800MHz.

The 800MHz spectrum will be the most sought after since it is the lower frequency band. This allows the waves to travel further, requiring fewer masts. It also allows for better penetration of buildings and obstacles meaning better indoor coverage. The 2600MHz spectrum will require more masts but is suited for high speed, data hungry services.

Ofcom have previously made a couple of points regarding the spectrum auction. Firstly, a slice of Spectrum has been reserved for the UK mobile operator Three, or a new entrant to the 4G market should one come forward. This will allow Three, the smallest UK operator, or the new entrant, to get involved with a 4G offering without being pushed out of the auction by cash rich operators such as Vodafone and O2. This will allow for there still to be 4 main UK operators leading way to better competition, lower prices and better coverage.

Furthermore, they have announced that the operator who is successful in winning the most sought offer available lot of spectrum will be obligated to ensure that 98% of the UK population are covered with a 4G signal by the end of 2017. This lot has a reserve price set of £250m

But, in short, being sent to EE shops that did not exist to get a replacement SIM , 3 different SIM cards before we could get up and running, being charged on a contract days before we actually had an active SIM, being told credits would be applied to the account but still waiting for these to be applied, the list goes on…

We were not alone though, many others had activation issues, SIM issues, migration issues, just look at EE’s Twitter timeline to see just how many people are experiencing difficulties we at 4Gdongles have been contacted by quite a few people also reporting similar issues.

Last week we saw issues not only with activation and SIM issues, but users were also reporting issues when making calls and sending SMS texts. EE did respond to say there were actively looking into reported network issues.

Next we hear from EE that there is a delay with SIM only contracts. They have delayed the release date by up to 2 weeks. No explanation as yet, is this technical issues or a process issues, your guess is as good as ours.

We were originally very impressed with the customer service from EE, the business team got us sorted with a contract very quickly and they did try to help but as time went on our faith in EE support diminished.

In our humble opinion, the network is pretty stable for the most part, speeds are very good once you are up and running and are getting a 4G signal, the issue seems to be with processes not being in place on time, EE staff being thrown in at the deep end, not really knowing how to go about helping in certain circumstances and certain migrations.

EE customer service is something they need to look at. The EE Twitter team seem more interested in bigging up the product, the company and running small competitions than actually helping users with genuine issue. Perhaps if EE spent more resources on sorting out their processes, better training of staff and improving customer service rather than extreme TV advertising perhaps they would really have a decent product they could be proud to promote.

Really, what astounds us the most is customer service. We have posted many tweets regarding issues we had experienced with EE. How many of these posts received a reply from the EE Twitter team offering to help? Zero, that’s how many, not once were we offered assistance.

Yet there is something more astounding and the EE Twitter team really need to pay attention here. We are no business gurus, but we do run a couple of small tech companies so we know a thing or two about customer service. The first rule is to ensure your customers are happy, if you really are experiencing issues, be honest about it and try to reassure your customers, but most importantly do not ignore them. We were ignored several times, but what surprised us more is what happened this morning.

Tech guru Jason Bradbury, probably best known for being a presenter on The Gadget Show has also been experiencing issues with EE. It took Jason an hour and a half in store last week trying to migrate to 4G but is still having issues. We were not the only ones to be ignored. This morning Jason sent a fair few tweets about his issue, just looking for assistance, many of which were retweeted by his followers, how many got a reply from the EE Twitter team? That’s right, zero again.

EE, you are lucky enough to have a customer in someone well known for their tech knowledge and following. There are many people who rely on people like Jason when they are making decisions on tech. Now I am sure Jason does not expect any specialist treatment, he is not that sort of guy, but if you have a customer who your potential customers listen to, who has 167k+ followers listening to his opinions, you need to at the very least reply and offer assistance, it’s just basic business sense. In Jason’s own words, his quest for a 4G service has been a ‘farse’.

If EE sorted out their processes and customer services they would have something we could write good things about, but sorry EE, unfortunately at this time we still have reason to have a big downer on the launch so far.

The business team were extremely helpful on the phone and it took no longer than 10-15 minutes to be setup with EE and our order placed.

As promised, the phone and SIM arrived the following day, Wednesday (yesterday). We eagerly opened up the box, setup the phone and inserted the SIM card, but the SIM did not want to activate.

We spoke with EE who informed us that their systems were showing that the SIM was trying to activate but it was coming back with errors so they would try to push it through again. The second attempt also resulted in an error. We were told they would call us back once they had investigated.

They did, as promised, call us back after around 10 minutes. It was an apology. We had been sent a T-Mobile 3G SIM instead of an EE 4G SIM. OK, so it was the first day of setting up EE contracts, mistakes are going to happen while staff get used to new processes and systems, we could forgive them for this.

It was explained to us that they were not yet sure of how to do a SIM replacement so unfortunately we would have to go to an EE store to do the swap. We asked for details of the nearest store, we were given the details of a local HMV that had what used to be a T-Mobile store inside. This was good news for us, the store was only around 10 minutes away.

Off we went, phone and incorrect SIM in hand only to find out, once we arrived at HMV, that the T-Mobile store in HMV had closed down 2 weeks earlier. So, off to the next nearest store, around 20 minutes away so still not too bad.

Upon arriving at the store we were pleasantly surprised with how nice the store looked with the EE branding. It was only a small store, with 3 staff on hand to help. The problem was, they too were unsure what to do. Our account would not show on their ‘Domino’ system, apparently we had been entered onto the ‘Excalibur’ system which only the call centres have access to at the moment, great.

After around 40 minutes and a phone call from the helpful staff to the ‘Store Support Team’ we left with a new EE 4G SIM card, around 15:30 yesterday afternoon (for which we had to fork out another £10 for the replacement SIM, although we have been told this will be credited to our account).

A couple of hours later and we still had no network, the SIM was still showing unregistered with the message ‘Emergency Calls Only’. Another call into EE business centre and we were told that the SIM activation was still showing as processing and to occasionally try switching the phone off and back on again.

At 22:00 last night, we gave up and put the phone to bed for the night, expecting by the morning we could finally start testing 4G speeds for our 4G in the North West report.

This morning, still nothing, still no network to test on. Yet another call to the Business Support team at EE. This time we were told that it was still processing and they would try to find out what was going on. After being on hold for a few minutes, the helpful gentleman came back on to inform us that there were indeed ‘teething issues’ with EE activations. There is currently a meeting taking place with the Tech guys at EE to discuss the issues and we should hear back by 10am this morning as to what is occurring.

So, we are still waiting, the SIM is still unregistered and we have started being charged for the contract. I discussed this with the Business Support team and was informed that they will look into crediting the last couple of days charges back to the account. We sure hope they do!

As it stands, we have a phone that is useless and a SIM card that is even more so. We do promise as soon as we have a working EE connection, we will run some tests and complete our report which of course, will be posted up on this website. Please also follow us on Twitter @UK_4G to stay updated with the situation!

Are you having EE activation woes? Please get in touch if so.

What can you do each month with the data allowances on offer? It is difficult to say exactly, webpages greatly differ in size, some may contain just text, some with images, others have multimedia built into the page. A standard email is typically tiny in size, but then can increase substantially with attachments.

Here we have used typical values to give you a rough idea of what can be done with each set of data allowances.

The following is an or situation, it is not this many emails and this much web browsing and this much streaming. It is either this many emails OR this much web browsing etc… It is only to give you an idea. In a real life scenario it would be some of this and some of that which would use up your data allowance.

So, if you are planning on switching to an EE 4G plan, which plan will you go for?

We believe EE have priced this intelligently. Obviously there is a premium for accessing the 4G network, but they have chosen an optimal price point that will not scare away a significant portion of their current customer base or new prospective customers.

Here is what they have to offer.

4G Mobile Prices & Plans

Consumers (includes VAT)

All of the 24 month plans include:

• A 4G Handset (Huawei Ascend P1 LTE) – other handsets available at an additional cost
• Unlimited calls and texts
• VoIP
• Tethering
• Access to BT Wi-Fi.

Data add-ons will be available should you reach your usage allowance. £3 for 50MB, £6 for 500MB, £16 for 2GB and £20 for 4GB. Alerts will be sent via text when you have used up 80% of your usage and when you have used all of your allowance.

Voice and Text allowances can be taken to Europe and a selection of other countries for an additional £5 per month.

£36 – 500MB

£41 – 1GB

£46 – 3GB

£51 – 5GB

£56 – 8GB

SIM only deals will launch on 9th November and will be £15 a month cheaper than the corresponding handset deal and will be available on 12 month contracts instead of 24 months.

Small Business Customers (excl. VAT)

All 24 month business plans include VoIP and tethering (as part of data allowance)

£30 – 1GB data, 1,000 mins, 1,000 texts

£35 – 1GB data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts + 1 add-on

£40 – 4GB data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts + 1 add-on

£45 – 8GB data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts + 1 add-on

£50 – 16GB data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts + 1 add-on

There is also a Small Business Sharer plan where you have more control over data/minutes/texts between users.

Mobile Broadband

EE will be offering 4G mobile broadband via a USB stick or Wi-Fi dongle (up to five devices can connect at at once – this is a restriction by EE as the device can accept 10 simultaneous connections).

Plans are on 18 month contracts:

Consumer plans (incl. VAT)

2GB: £15.99

3GB: £20.99

5GB: £25.99

Small Business Plans (excl VAT):

2GB: £13.33

3GB: £17.49

5GB: £21.66

Home Fibre Broadband

Plans run for 18 months.

38Mbps service, capped at 40GB data: £15

38Mbps service, unlimited data: £20

76Mbps service, unlimited data: £25

Users will need to pay £14/month line rental and a one-off connection fee of £50

Incentives and EE offers

Opt for a higher tariff for benefits - Customers who take the £41 per month (or £35 per month for businesses) can access 18 million music tracks from the music-on-demand service Deezer, download two games from a selection including Asphalt 7 and Modern Combat 3 as well as streaming live TV via EE’s mobile TV service which includes 19 channels such as Channel 4, Eurosport and the Cartoon Network.

Multi-Buy Discount – If you opt to take the fibre broadband offering with your 4G plan, EE will be offering a discount of £5 a month.

EE Wednesdays – 2 for 1 cinema tickets, redeemable via a code sent via SMS text or via the EE Mobile App (more details below). Therefore, current Orange customers will not lose their 2 for 1 Wednesday offers if they opt to switch their contracts over to an EE 4G plan. Sensible.

EE Film – online movie rentals. This is something we didn’t expect or had heard anything about. EE are pitching themselves against the likes of NetFlix and iTunes etc and offering online movie rentals. After renting the movie you’ll have 30 days to start watching the movie and a 48 hour time frame once you have started to watch it. As a launch offer, if you become an EE 4G customer or a Fibre Broadband customer, you can select 1 film per week from the film store for free, courtesy of EE, up until 28th February 2013.

EE App – The EE app will be available on iPhone/iPad and on Android devices, coming to Windows Phones soon. The app will include Cinema Guide, EE Wednesdays tickets, the Film Store and Trailers. Although, on Apple devices film rental needs to be done via the Internet Browser rather than through the app.

We now eagerly await the 30th October for the EE 4G network to launch…

O2, Vodafone, EE and Three have jointly formed a company, Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, which has the task of ensuring a smooth transition of the 800MHz spectrum band to 4G services and away from digital TV signals.

The company has been formed to ensure consumers do not experience TV interference or loss of signal once the spectrum is being used by the mobile operators and to clear the spectrum as soon as possible for the mobile operators. We were pleased to read that the company would be funded by the successful bidders of the upcoming spectrum auction and not by the UK tax payer.

The creation of Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited (DMSL) will now “further accelerate the roll out of competitive 4G services next year”. Andrew Pinder, who has been named as interim chariman of DMSL, has said in a statement that this “represents a real milestone and I will continue to work with all of the mobile operators and other stakeholders to get plans in place for the rapid launch of 4G services on the spectrum to be auctioned next year”.

Andrew Pinder is suitably qualified for the post, having held many high profile  executive posts in the public and private sector relating to IT. He held the post of Chairman of Becta (a government agency, funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families which oversees the e-strategy for Education and supports information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning in schools and colleges) from January 2006 to January 2009 among other management consultancy assignments for the UK government.

Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards, praised the announcement today, “This is further evidence of the progress that is being made by the industry, guided by Ofcom, to deliver 4G mobile services across the UK. The 4G auction is already on track to begin at the end of the year and the creation of Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited ahead of time represents yet another step towards bringing consumers early access to the next generation of mobile broadband services.”

Many consumers will be disappointed by the fact that their current device is not supported on EE’s 4G network, or any UK 4G network in the future for that matter. Upgrading from the iPhone 4S to a 5 may make sense, it is the next generation of the iPhone so it would be understandable why some users would upgrade. But for the Galaxy SIII owners, there is no real benefit in changing over to the SIII LTE other than of course 4G compatibility.

The same goes for new iPad owners. There has been speculation this week that not only will Apple release a mini iPad (which is reported to be WiFi only) but they will also release a version of the new iPad which is compatible with EE’s 4G network. Again no real benefit of changing your device other than to access the new high speed mobile network.

When the EE 4G network launches, the Huawei E589 Mobile WiFi device will be offered. This device will connect to the EE 4G network, it then allows you to share the mobile connection with any WiFi enabled device. What this means is have the E589 in your pocket and you can connect to the 4G network on your 4S, on your SIII or on your iPad. In fact any device which is WiFi capable can use the E589 as a personal, mobile 4G router.

OK, so you will obviously be paying for a 4G contract for the E589 so how does this help? Well firstly you can connect all your devices, your laptop, your phone, your tablet. Secondly, if you are paying for a 3G contract for your phone and a 3G contract for your iPad, cancel your iPad contract (effectively making it WiFi only) and use the money you have saved towards your E589 contract. Your iPad is mobile again, your phone can now access 4G over WiFi and so can your other WiFi devices.

In summary, just because your mobile or tablet does not have 4G capabilities, it does not mean it cannot access the 4G network.

Huawei and ZTE are two of the great tech firms to come out of China. Their networking hardware is superb and can be found as the backbone for hundreds of mobile networks around the world. Their high-end telecoms equipment will never be seen by the average consumer but still it is what make our mobile networks function every day.

After a year long investigation the US House of Representatives branded Huawei and ZTE as threats to the US national security fearing that China could use equipment made by the two companies to spy on US communications and threaten vital systems.

Is this possible? Well yes, in theory, in practice it is highly unlikely and there are plenty of measures a government could put in place to continue to use the manufacturers without any security concerns. They are two of the most globally trusted and transparent Chinese manufacturers there are.

The US panel has gone so far as to urge network providers to source other vendors for their projects and even suggested regulators block any future business contracts involving Huawei or ZTE and US companies.

We feel for the two Chinese giants. Huawei are the world’s second-largest maker of routers and other telecoms gear, and ZTE are the fifth-largest. They cooperate fully with any security requests made by governments.  In fact, we are pleased to say that the UK government and network operators have a different stance. EE stand by Huawei for their network hardware, in particular the upgrade in their network to support 4G technology.

A spokesman for EE has said, ”Huawei, a globally trusted and respected company, underwent a stringent security check and agreed to a specific set of security requirements before being selected to work with EE in May 2011 on the installation and upgrade of our ’4G ready’ 2G network infrastructure.”

While a UK government spokesman has been reported as stating that a Cyber Security Evaluation Centre was set up in 2010 which enables government experts to work with Huawei to give assurance that their products meets Government security standards and that other countries are considering doing the same.

This clearly shows that the Chinese manufacturers are happy to meet any security measures necessary for governments peace of mind and are happy to allow security experts to analyse their hardware and software code to check for any threats.

Of course, governments have to protect their nations but if the companies are open, transparent and willing we see no reason why there should be a block on trading with the Chinese manufacturers who are clearly some of the best in the world.

There may be more to it than initially meets the eye, more to do with political prejudices than technology security concerns, but as we said, we’re not a political site, we just empathise with the Chinese manufacturers and hope this will not cause too much of a blow to them and they continue to make great, reliable networking products to support our ever growing mobile networking needs.

An International research centre is to be created right here in the UK, specifically at Surrey University. The £35m centre will be funded partly from the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF), who is to provide £11 million, with the remainder of the funding being brought in from private companies such as Huawei, Samsung, Telefonica Europe, Fujitsu Laboratories Europe, Rohde-Schwarz and AIRCOM International.

This is great news for the UK who played an active role in 2G cellular standards but more recently has fallen behind with the adoption of 3G and more recently 4G technologies. Professor Rahim Tafazolli, head of the University of Surrey’s Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR) has said, “The university’s industry partners have identified this proposal as the single biggest opportunity for the UK to regain a world leading position in the development of 5G technologies and for the development of vibrant businesses around the technologies.”

So what is 5G? Well, it is that new that it does not yet have  a formal technical definition from bodies such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and it is unlikely that we will see it any time before 2020 at least.

The UK centre at Surrey University will be looking specifically at three areas.

Speed. Tafazolli believes speeds could hit 10Gbps in a cell, to be divided by users, which could allow for as much as 200Mbps per user.

Spectrum. Surrey will be looking at usage of extremely high frequency bands, or millimetric waves, going as low as 50GHz.

Efficiency.  “The electricity cost is huge, especially if you are talking about that bit rate and a huge number of cell stations,” Tafazolli said. “Energy efficiency would reduce that cost – it’s extremely important.”

The university has already indicated where it will trial 5G, located across the University and over to Guildford, the trial should measure approximately five square kilometres by the end of next year with local SMEs being invited to join in with the trial.

Meanwhile we await the launch of EE’s 4G network in the coming weeks.

Apple released three different versions of the iPhone 5, each being equipped to utilise different sets of these frequency bands to try and cater for as many different spectrum bands around the world as possible. Included in two of the three iPhone 5 models is the ability to use the 1800MHz band. This was great news for EE as this is the band that their 4G network will run on when it is launched on 30 October.

However, in the Summer of 2013 we should see the other main operators in the UK launch their 4G networks. These networks will be launched after the operators have successfully bid on spectrum in the upcoming Ofcom auction. Here lies the issue. The spectrum bands up for grabs are the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands. Neither of which are supported on the iPhone 5.

The recently launched Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE version does in fact support not only the 1800MHz band that the EE 4G netwrok will be running on but also supports the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands for when the other operators launch their 4G networks.

In summary, if you are happy with a phone that will enable you to have 4G capabilities but only on one of the UK network operators, then the iPhone 5 will do just fine. But to future-proof your phone the Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE is certainly the better option.

Do you really want to spend all that money on an iPhone 5 and be stuck with one network operator, not being able to switch providers without losing 4G capability?

We’re not getting into the debate of iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy SIII in terms of what is the better phone, they both have their advantages and disadvantages, but in terms of what is compatible for the UK 4G networks then the SIII LTE is the way to go.

There is one caveat with this. EE had to sell off part of its spectrum, a term that was placed on them during the T-Mobile/Orange merger. So, the UK network operator Three will own 2x15MHz of its 1800MHZ spectrum. If they chose to launch 4G services on this band then the iPhone 5 would of course be compatible with their network also, but so far Three has not announced any plans to do so.

In summary, the iPhone 5 will work on the EE 4G network, and any network Three launch on the 1800MHz spectrum band. It will not work on the 4G networks we will see next year from O2 and Vodafone. The Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE model will work on all of the UK 4G networks.