Vodafone Connect 233 Large UK Towns and Cities to 4G as More Go Live

Mobile operator Vodafone has announced the next batch of locations for their national roll-out of “ultrafast” 4G based Mobile Broadband connectivity, which is now live in 233 large towns and cities across the United Kingdom (we predict they’re currently able to reach around 40% of the UK).

So far Vodafone has already spent £804m to acquire a big slice of the necessary 2.6GHz and 800MHz radio spectrum bands for their 4G (LTE) network (here) and they aim to spend another £900m on upgrading the national network during 2014, which also forms part of a network sharing deal with O2 (here).

The latest areas to go live include a number of mid-Sussex locations in England, such as Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and Hurstpierpoint, and not to mention other recent additions like Swindon, York, Slough and Epping. A few more towns and cities have been listed below, although Vodafone seem unwilling to publish a comprehensive roll-out table.

Vodafone’s Latest UK 4G Deployments

– East & West Sussex, now including Brighton, Hove and Hastings

– Greater Manchester, now including Oldham, Swinton and Stockport

– Hertfordshire, now including Watford, Hatfield and Hemel Hempstead

– Inner London, now including Tower Hamlets, Camden and Hackney

– Kent, now including Maidstone, Folkstone and Tunbridge Wells

– Surrey, now including Staines, Epsom and Ewell

– Tyne & Wear, now including Jarrow, Gateshead and Sunderland

– West Midlands, now including West Bromwich, Stourbridge and Dudley

– West Yorkshire, now including Huddersfield, Pontefract and Wakefield

In at least one rural village, Great Shefford in West Berkshire, Vodafone’s 4G service is now replacing the dated fixed line broadband connectivity. As local resident Deborah Cripps said, “The broadband signal here is quite slow and very hit and miss; sometimes the phone line and broadband drops out or we have a power cut, and when that happened in the past, you couldn’t do anything at all.” Cripps added that the local 4G service was now so good that it could outperform her wifi and fixed line connection, “I can always find 4G signal in places round the house where I can’t even get the WiFi, so it’s made all the difference“.

In fairness the positive remarks above somewhat gloss over the downside of 4G vs a fixed line connection, which is the limited data allowance. Vodafone’s top SIM-only 4G plan gives you 9GB but that will set you back £41 per month (12 month contract) and the 13GB option is only available if you take one of their handsets on a 24 month contract at a staggering £62 per month.

Meanwhile some ISPs, such as TalkTalk, will give you unlimited fixed line broadband for just a handful of pounds, although this does increase when you consider the £15 or so cost of line rental on top and another £5 or so for Anytime UK calls; but it’s still well below £41.

Never the less Vodafone are making good progress and remain on target for their goal of covering 98% of the population by the end of 2015.