EE 4G network expands to another nine cities

EE's 4G network has been expanded to another nine cities as the network operator continues to rush ahead with its rollouts before rivals O2, Vodafone and Three come online with their own services later this year.

The towns now covered are Barnsley, Chorley, Coventry, Newport, Preston, Rotherham, Telford, Walsall and Watford.

The rollouts means there are now 37 locations covered by the network since it launched in late October, which the firm claims is equally to 45 percent of the UK population. It aims to have 72 locations online by the summer.

"We're committed to making the UK's first 4G service available to as many people, as quickly as possible," said chief executive Olaf Swantee.

"It's a great achievement for our engineering teams to be able to launch in another nine towns this month, enabling more and more consumers and businesses to take advantage of superfast mobile internet."

The firm is having to move quickly as its head start over its rivals will run out by the summer after the auctions for new 4G spectrum ended last week. O2, Vodafone, Three, as well as BT, will then be able to offer their own services to rival EE.

Bidding for the spectrum only raked in £2.3bn for the government, and although this was lower than expected, it could be good news for the market by helping operators kick off a bidding war for contracts.

Earlier this week at Mobile World Congress the EE chief executive revealed that the average customers on its 4G network uses 1.4GB of data per month, claiming this proved there is no need for "unlimited" mobile contracts, as some had called for.