EE Boost Rural UK 4G Mobile Broadband Cover via External Antenna

Mobile operator EE has decided to complement their existing 4G based wireless 4GEE Home Broadband service by introducing its own brand of external antenna, which can be fixed to the outside of your house in order to improve signal reception and thus Mobile Broadband performance.

In some rural areas it’s already possible to receive a faster broadband connection over 4G than via the best available fixed line broadband ISP solution, which is one of the reasons why EE last year chose to introduce a new LTE-Advanced (Category 7) capable 4G+ Home Router that could theoretically handle Mobile Broadband speeds of up to 300Mbps (here).

The 4GEE Home Broadband router could also be taken alongside huge monthly data allowances of up to 200GB (monthly prices range from about £25 for 10GB to £60 for 200GB). The router itself is free on an 18 month contract or you could pay a one-off charge of £99 via a 30 day term.

However an indoor device won’t always deliver the best signal reception and so ideally you’d need to consider an external antenna, which can be fixed to the outside of your property and then connected via a cable directly to the 4GEE router. Various generic brand antennas can already be purchased but EE has now decided to sell its own solution, which for a one-off payment of £100 will also come alongside a professional installation.

The new antenna has already been tested in the Northern Fells area of Cumbria, where it helped to deliver Mobile Broadband speeds of “over” 100Mbps to local homes. This is related to a similar trial that was conducted during 2013 (here and here), although back then EE’s network didn’t support modern 4G+ features like Carrier Aggregation (i.e. average speeds have significantly improved).

Max Taylor, EE’s MD of Marketing, said:

“As our network continues to expand into some of the most remote parts of the UK, we’ve seen the amazing impact that 4G connectivity can have on rural communities. Our newest 4G home broadband router and antenna takes this one step further, ensuring thousands of families in rural areas across the UK could enjoy the benefits of superfast broadband inside their home for the very first time – whether video-calling the grandparents or streaming their favourite TV series.”

Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith and The Border, said:

“What EE is doing is transformative. One of the real challenges is getting fixed fibre into people’s houses because they are so sparsely populated in rural areas. The great thing about EE’s new solution though is that it’s wireless – allowing people to get superfast home broadband via 4G. As the number of new mobile masts continue to roll out, more and more areas of Cumbria will come online. With access to fast broadband, people’s lives really will be transformed”

The approach being taken by EE is perhaps not as original as suggested in the comments above, not least because a couple of third-party companies have been taking exactly the same approach (i.e. installing external antennas alongside 4G routers with a data tariff), while piggy-backing off EE’s network, for the past few years. Not to mention that ordinary users with a bit of knowledge have been able to do this themselves for even longer (e.g. Poynting XPOL2 antenna).

What makes this different is that a major national operator like EE has now centralising such deployments around a single branded product offering (home router, antenna, installation and data plan), which makes it easier to understand and sell. In keeping with that they’ve recently updated their fixed line broadband availability checker, which now also includes the option of their 4GEE Home Broadband service, where viable.

Furthermore if the customer has an existing EE Pay Monthly phone plan or 12 month SIM Only plan, then EE will also boost their phone’s monthly data allowance by an extra 5GB (fixed line broadband subscribers get the same benefit).

At present EE claims that their 4G network should be able to reach 90% of the United Kingdom’s landmass (equal to more than 99.6% of UK homes), which by 2020 could reach 95%, and they predict that 580,000 homes with slow or no fixed line access could thus benefit from their 4GEE solution.

The obvious pitfall in all this is that speeds of 100Mbps+ (this won’t be viable everywhere) are all well and good but end-users will still be hobbled by the expensive mobile data allowances, particularly with Ofcom stating that fixed line users who can access superfast broadband tend to gobble an average of 231GB per month. On the other hand it’s still an attractive solution for those most in need.

UPDATE 9:03am

EE has just released this video.