Orange, T-Mobile and Three customers will soon be able to receive faster mobile internet access thanks to a new £100m-plus deal between the mobile operators and Virgin Media Business.
The deal will see the UK’s first synchronous Ethernet mobile backhaul service, enabling customers of Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile) and Three to benefit from ultra-fast access to mobile data on the move.
Virgin Media Business will build 14 regional aggregation networks across the UK for Mobile Broadband Network Limited (MBNL) – the joint venture between Three UK and Everything Everywhere which manages and delivers the combined 3G access networks of the two companies.
This will improve MBNL’s bandwidth capacity, which in turn should give users on these three networks speedier mobile broadband and improve features such as video calling and mobile TV .
Neil Berkett, chief executive officer of Virgin Media, said: “People no longer expect to simply make calls from their mobile phone. Being connected all the time to social networks, the internet and their favourite apps is very much a basic expectation which operators need to deliver on.”
“Investing now means they will be able to deal with the escalating data demands of today and tomorrow.”
Graham Payne, managing director of MBNL, commented: “Mobile data and the increase in smartphone usage is a big growth opportunity for us. Connecting our users to the online world, from any location and from any device, is at the heart of what we do.”
“Working together with Virgin Media Business, the first company in the market to offer this synchronous Gigabit Ethernet service, we will be able to scale for future demand.”
