Customers in rural Cornwall to get first taste of combined high-speed mobile and fixed-line broadband
Everything Everywhere and BT Wholesale are launching the first customer trial of 4G LTE broadband services.
The trial will start this September with up to 100 mobile and 100 fixed-line customers in Cornwall who will receive free combined fixed-line and mobile broadband until early next year.
Everything Everywhere says it will also test 4G-enabled mobile handsets and broadband dongles.
The trial will use two 10MHz tranches of 800 MHz spectrum covering an area of 25 square killometeres.
Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks are providing supporting technology, with additional support from The Cornwall Development Company.
Everything Everywhere CEO Tom Alexander said: “Our work with BT is providing a test bed for new technologies such as 4G LTE which, with the correct allocation of sub 1GHz spectrum from the Government, has the potential to make a real impact on the way in which we communicate in the future.”
Everything Everywhere and BT Wholesale say the trial is partly designed to test LTE as a way to provide broadband coverage to areas which receive low fixed-line broadband speeds, or no broadband at all.
The trial area covers 700 premises with limited or no broadband access in rural Cornwall south of Newquay.
