EE

Mobile Operator EE

image ©ee.co.uk



Useful Links
EE Website

EE is number one mobile network within the UK, regularly coming out on top in surveys be that high speed (40Mbps), low latency (<36), or coverage by population (99%) or coverage by geographical area (94%-England, 89%-NI, 77%-Scotland, 86%-Wales)

EE was established as a merger of T-Mobile and Orange in the UK. Both T-Mobile and Orange came into the (2G) mobile phone market when OfCom wanted to expand the number of operators from 2 to 4. For a while EE was used as the trading name for the 4G operation only following the merger, but now the EE name is used for all mobile operations by the company (BT).

The frequencies that EE use are :

700MHzBand 295G
700MHz SDLBand 675G
800MHzBand 204G
1800MHzBand 32G + 4G
2100MHzBand 13G + 4G
2600MHzBand 74G
3400MHzBand 785G
3600MHzBand 775G

EE is owned by BT who had previously owned some mobile phone bandwidth themselves. As part of the merger agreement to create EE, they had to release some of their bandwidth to their competitors, most notably Three. EE, or more correctly BT, is currently well placed in the vertical market of delivering content over the air, with their large share of the Broadband market, mobile phone market, trunk network. and media including TV, Sports and Film. Many commentators believe this could gain BT / EE a much larger share of these markets and grow the company into a near monopoly supplier. Already the "last-mile" operation of OpenReach has been split away from BT but still owned by the company.

EE were the first company to run 4G, using their spare capacity, obtained from the merger of the T-mobile and Orange companies, at 1800MHz. They now offer 4G over most of the UK and 99% of the population.

EE were the first company to release 5G on their network (30-May-2019) in parts of the big UK cities - London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Belfast. Now their 5G offerring is available over 60% of the UK population (2023-1-18). They are using the 700Mhz, 3.4GHz / 3.6GHz bands. EE have been caught up in the argument about Chinese suppliers on the 5G network which has led to them stripping out Huawei equipment from their network, at great cost.

The EE company inherited a very large number of High Street shops from T-Mobile and Orange. These have been branded as EE and in many high streets and cities a number have closed due to the replication of product. EE sell mobile phones and devices for their EE network both in their stores and via third-party suppliers.