Mobile operator EE has announced the prices for its 4G service, with prices starting from £36 per month.
The service, the first of its kind to be commercially available in the UK, will come with no limit on domestic calls and texts.
However, customers on this plan will only have a data allowance of 500MB, at which point net access is stopped unless a data add-on is bought.
The 4G service will launch on 30 October.
Compared to uses on the slower 3G network, data usage on 4G is expected to be high – potentially leading to increased costs for users who wish to download a lot of data-intensive content such as audio or video.
4G is the latest mobile phone technology that promises up to download data up to five times faster than 3G networks. In practice this means you could stream and HD video on your phone, or tablet, without any buffering or delays, just as you might on a good quality home broadband connection.
So far EE, the owner of Orange and T-Mobile, is the only network to launch a 4G service. It is offering 24 month 4G plans – which come with unlimited calls and texts – from £36 a month, although for this you only get 500MB of data that you technically could use up in less than 4 minutes on the new network.
A full list of the 24 month plans is listed below.
• 500MB of data – £36 a month
• 1GB of data – £41 a month
• 3GB of data – £46 a month
• 5GB of data – £51 a month
• 8GB of data – £56 a month
Data add-ons will cost £3 for 50MB, £6 for 500MB, £15 for 2GB or £20 for 4GB.
EE is also offering 12 month deals with the same data limits, although these cost an extra £10 a month.
Existing Orange and T-Mobile customers who have been in contract for over six months will have to pay a penalty of two-thirds of their remaining deal to switch to 4GEE, which launches on Tuesday 30 October.
Customers who joined more recently can switch at no extra cost — but only if they already have a 4G-ready handset, such as Apple’s iPhone 5 (pictured, right) and the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE.
Users will need a 4G phone and an EE contract to access the faster network, as it won’t work via existing Orange or T-Mobile services.
Watch EE’s promo video here:
