BT Wholesale and O2 UK Sign Deal to Boost 4G Mobile Data Capacity

Mobile operator O2 UK (Telefonica) has signed a new ten-year deal that will see BTWholesale work to support the imminent introduction of faster 4G (LTE) based mobile broadband services for millions of the operators customers by building a new high capacity transmission network.

The new “managed network” solution, which will also deliver high speed mobile backhaul links between O2’s mobile base stations and the new transmission network, aims to provide the mobile operator with enough network capacity to “support the increasing demands of customers choosing its planned 4G services“.

Adrian Di Meo, CTO of O2 UK, said:

“With the UK’s 4G spectrum auction complete, UK mobile data traffic is set to grow by more than 400 per cent by 2016. This is a huge opportunity for us, as well as a technical challenge. But through our partnership with BT Wholesale, customers of O2 will be backed by a high-performance mobile internet network which we believe will release the potential of 4G services and result in unrivalled mobile phone and internet browsing experiences.”

Chet Patel, MD of BT Wholesale Markets, said:

“Our network solution will help O2 to deliver a next generation mobile experience to their customers to fully exploit the exciting possibilities of 4G technologies. We are moving quickly to get O2 up and running.”

Precise details are hard to come by, although the deal means that O2 will need to migrate from its legacy TDM platform and on to a new generation of Ethernet based IP services. O2 further suggests that this new deal will cut its “overall transmission costs” and help it to deliver a “host of new applications to its customers”.

Last week Virgin Media confirmed that it had also signed a “significant” ten-year deal with O2 UK for the provision of backhaul to 1,500 sites (here).