Yesterday we had news that EE and Three were beginning to share the love. There wasn’t a great deal of information to go on at the time, but we’ve now some further details on the agreement. Sadly there’s a large amount of tech websites carrying incorrect information on this. We’ve spoken to EE direct to get the truth behind the deal.
The two networks are to share costs for preparing sites in rural areas. These are usually expensive to deploy and can sometimes be a little lower down the priorities list for networks due to the remote locations. The sites in question will cover some 20% of the population and the agreement will involve the civil engineering and construction aspects.
EE tell us ..
The new framework increases cost efficiencies as we continue our roll out of 4G to the next 20% of the UK population in rural areas, covering more than 90% by the end of the year. This is part of our £1.5 billion three year investment to significantly differentiate the EE network in terms of the people we connect and the experience they receive.
If you were to equate mobile networks to roads, it’s far better to build one road to a village together rather than two roads next to each other. Both networks will be using their own spectrum, antenna and core networks, but they’ll be reducing the costs of actually introducing the new services (4G etc) to rural areas.
Working together to reduce costs, especially in this case where more rural areas will be receiving the newer services, can only be good news for networks and customers alike.