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Summary The UK's first major fourth generation (4G) mobile service has gone live in 11 cities.
London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and Southampton will have access to network EEs 4G from Tuesday morning.Other mobile networks will not be able to offer 4G until next year.Critics have questioned the services affordability - particularly with regard to data usage allowance.Belfast, Derby, Hull, Newcastle and Nottingham will be active by Christmas, the company said.Network EE, formerly known as Everything, Everywhere and which owns Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, has promised speeds of between 8 to 12Mbps - up to five times faster than third generation mobile technology, known as 3G.The extra speed and capacity allows for high-quality streaming of audio, video and other content while on the move.The company said as well as giving customers faster internet, 4G would also be of big benefit to businesses.However, such benefits come at a cost - the entry tariff of £36 per month includes 500MB of data, beyond which an add-on cost must be paid if the user wishes to carry on using the internet on their mobile.EE was always going to have a difficult role to play being the first mover”An hour of streaming a programme using, for example, the BBC iPlayer mobile app, can use up to 225MB - almost half the entry level tariffs data allowance limit.The add-on costs for extra data begins at £3 for 50MB, and extends to £20 for 4GB.The companys top tariff for standard customers will cost £56 per month, and has a data allowance of 8GB.EE boss Olaf Swantee has said that the pricing is based on months of consumer research and that the tariffs have been priced at the sweet spot.But Matthew Howett, a regulation analyst at Ovum, said EE has a challenge in convincing consumers their 4G is good value for money.Its fair to say that EE has attracted a fair degree of criticism not so much for the price of the 4G tariffs, but rather on the amount of data bundled at each level, he said.EE was always going to have a difficult role to play being the first mover.However, its peers may be grateful for attempting to move away from an all-you-can-eat world for data to an attempt to monetise it.EE boss Olaf Swantee says his company has hit the sweet spot with their pricingToo quickly data became commoditised for operators once smartphones and other connected devices proliferated.
