EE boasts 4G customers are getting up to 30Mbit/s speeds

EE has said its 4G customers are seeing an average of 6-8Mbit/s on its network, claiming this demonstrates the services are, as it boasted, five times faster than 3G speeds and can hit as high as 30Mbit/s in some circumstances.

The claim was made by the firm's vice president of wholesale and M2M, Mark Overton, speaking in London on Friday morning at a Westminster eForum event.

"We've been live in market for just over a month now and are seeing reliable 6-8Mbit/s speeds, and I think anyone using 3G would agree that's faster. And we are seeing significant customer uplift on speed on that data access," he said.

"Sometimes we are seeing speeds up to 30Mbit/s although that's usually at a certain time of day under certain scenarios."

Overton also said the firm was looking at bidding for 800MHz ahead of the forthcoming auctions in January, but said its 1800MHz service was adequate too.

"The reality is 1800MHz does a huge amount but we are interested in 800MHz. We're interested in any spectrum really as it's such as a precious commodity so we want as much as we can get to offer a seamless experience."

The comments come as the mobile operators gear up for next year's spectrum auction of both 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum bands which are expected to raise around £3.5bn in additional revenues for the government.