EE to switch on 300Mbps 4G service in East London

Tech City in East London will be among the first to benefit from EE's new 4G LTE Advanced network, which the firm claims will deliver the fastest mobile broadband speeds in the world.

The mobile operator has teamed up with Chinese networking vendor Huawei to deliver the superfast service, which will reportedly offer mobile broadband speeds of up to 300Mbps.

EE is planning to embark on a customer trial in early December that will involve offering mobile Wi-Fi services to Tech City-based businesses, and the offering is being officially switched on today.

The LTE Advanced network is reportedly able to deliver faster speeds and higher capacity than traditional 4G networks through the use of carrier aggregation. This process allows carriers to pool their resources at the device level, resulting in faster speeds across their coverage areas.

Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE, said the new network is designed to meet the increasing demands of data-hungry consumers and businesses.

"Today is about introducing the next age of 4G mobile technology to the UK. Our existing 4G network delivers incredible mobile data speeds and covers millions of people across the country, but we never stand still we know that mobile data usage is going to keep increasing, and rapidly so," said Swantee.

Victor Zhang, CEO of Huawei, said the announcement is an important step forward for the UK's mobile broadband infrastructure, as well as its business operations over here.

"We have been operating in the UK for 12 years and are committed to improving the national telecommunications infrastructure for the whole population," said Zhang

"We are proud to have worked closely with EE as we grow our business in the UK following our pledge to invest 1.3 billion into the economy over the next five years," he added.

Caroline Donnelly is the news and analysis editor of IT Pro and its sister site Cloud Pro, and covers general news, as well as the storage, security, public sector, cloud and Microsoft beats. Caroline has been a member of the IT Pro/Cloud Pro team since March 2012, and has previously worked as a reporter at several B2B publications, including UK channel magazine CRN, and as features writer for local weekly newspaper, The Slough and Windsor Observer. She studied Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leicester and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism at PMA Training in 2006.