image ©ee.co.uk

EE is the number one mobile network within the UK by a number of measures including serving the largest percentage of population (99%), percentage of geographical area (91%) and customer satisfaction. EE has the fastest network in the UK with the average speeds are 28.9Mbps with an average latency of 39.7ms making EE the fastest in the UK. It is the largest of the UK mobile phone operators with 32.9% of the market.

EE was established as a merger of T-Mobile and Orange in the UK. For a while EE was used as the trading name for the 4G operation only, but now the whole organisation operates under the EE name. Both T-Mobile and Orange came into the mobile phone market when OfCom wanted to expand the number of operators from 2 to 4. Origionally T-Mobile operated as One-to-One which initially transmitted within the M25 before moving to nationwide and changing it's name. Both Orange and T-Mobile operate their 2G operation at 1800MHz.

The frequencies they use are :

800MHz	Band 20	4G
1800MHz	Band 3	2G + 4G
2100MHz	Band 1	3G + 4G
2300MHz	Band 7	4G
3400MHz	Band 42	5G

EE is now owned by BT who had previously owned some mobile phone bandwidth. As part of the merger agreement the new company 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. Indeed EE is the only one of the mobile phone operators with this provision. Many commentators believe this could gain BT / EE a much larger share of the markets and grow into a monopoly supplier. Already there have been moves to split the "last-mile" operation of OpenReach away from 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 standard 4G plus an offerring called Double Speed 4G. They also are developing and expanding their 4G+ offerring in UK cities, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. They are currently upgrading their 3G network to support 4G and 5G.

EE were the first company to release 5G on their network on 30-May-2019 in parts of London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Belfast. With other cities coming onstream during 2019. They are using the 3.4GHz band. 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. There are also issues with phones to work on the new 5G network with the Samsung Galaxy S105G the only non-Chinese phone available.

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.