The cost to access Everything Everywhere’s 4G network will start at £36 per month for consumers and £35 per month (plus VAT) for businesses when the service launches on 30 October. The service will be branded ‘4GEE’, and the launch will be backed by a multi-million pound marketing campaign across TV, print and digital channels.
Prices will range from £36 per month for a 500MB allowance, to £56 per month for an 8GB allowance, with unlimited voice calls and texts, and BT wi-fi thrown in on all plans. Data controls will alert customers when they are approaching the data allowance limit, and then when their limit is reached. They can then choose to buy a data add-on, or wait until the next bill period starts.
For an additional monthly fee of £5, customers will be able to take their unlimited voice and text allowance abroad with them, in Europe and selected countries in the rest of the world, as well as access to data add-ons.
The operator has also confirmed that, from 30 October, all existing Everything Everywhere, Orange and T-Mobile stores will become newly-branded EE stores. But the Orange and T-Mobile brands will continue to exist, with the stores servicing all three brands.
The 4GEE service will initially go live in 10 cities – London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and Glasgow, plus parts of Southampton – on 30 October, with five more cities – Belfast, Derby, Hull, Nottingham and Newcastle – going live by Christmas. The network aims to offer coverage of 98 per cent of the UK population by the end of 2014.
EE is also offering corporate customers a range of dedicated 4GEE plans from an additional £3 a month on top of their existing or new package, as well as added services including security and mobile app development. Data share plans are also available for companies, including reduced out-of-bundle rates for data, and spending caps ranging from £50-£200.
In addition to mobile data at roughly five times the speed of 3G (based on 1.5Mbps UK average speed for 3G [Ofcom speed survey], and 8-12Mbps average speed for 4G – EE Data), EE will also offer high-speed fibre broadband to the home, at a claimed 10 times typical broadband speed (based on 58.5Mbps average speed for EE Fibre compared to the average speed of 5.9Mbps on ADSL Broadband [August Ofcom survey]), with prices starting from £15 per month. This service will be available to 11m UK premises, though its not clear whether this is the total at launch, or the final toal achievable.
To help customers make the most of 4G, EE is also launching EE Film, which combines movie downloads and streaming, trailers, listings and 2-for-1 cinema ticketing. The EE Film catalogue includes over 700 titles. EE Film also offers ‘pause & play’ functionality between mobile and PC with the largest catalogue of new releases compared to similar providers. 4GEE customers will able to download or stream a film, each week, on EE, without impacting their data allowance. Further films can be downloaded or streamed with prices starting at 79p, and the cost can be charged to customers’ mobile bill, or credit and debit cards. 
EE is also promising expert support by way of a “fast-track service for all customers”, plus access to “approximately 10,000 experts on the high street, on the phone and online”.
“We’re proud to be leading the way and pioneering the roll out of 4G in the UK,” said EE CEO, Olaf Swantee. “Our new plans have been developed to offer our customers everything they have been asking for – superfast performance, choice and value – as well as a fresh approach to pricing and customer service that offers accessibility, flexibility and guidance every step of the way.”
David Murphy writes:
So the 4G cat is out of the bag as EE reveals the price of its 4G service (and its plans to remove the Orange and T-Mobile brands from the High Street). While the entry-level tariff of £36 per month looks more than reasonable, when you take the miserly 500MB allowance into consideration, you wonder why anyone buying into 4G would go for it. It would be a bit like buying a Ferrari and then refusing to put any petrol in it.
At the other end of the pricing spectrum, £56 a month looks a tad lumpy, but if you’re the kind of mobile user that wants fast mobile data badly enough to pay that sort of money for it, you’re probably spending several times that already and putting up with patchy 3G coverage.
The pricing is likely to become slightly keener once the other networks join the 4G party. In the meantime, the 4GEE service will sink or swim by the quality of the network coverage. The speed with which EE is going live suggests that the tests have ticked all the right boxes. If so, you can expect to hear rave reviews from the early adopters. If not, those 10,000 EE experts should prepare for the backlash.
