EE UK Upgrades Indoor 4G Mobile Network at Manchester Airport
Mobile operator EE has today announced that they’ve worked with the Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG) to deliver “enhanced connectivity” across all three terminals at Manchester Airport. The upgrade involved the deployment of a new Distributed Antenna System (DAS) to boost indoor coverage and capacity.
The new system has been engineered specifically for the demands of a busy international airport, particularly at peak times. It’s not just the sheer number of people using their phones that creates challenges, it’s also the physical complexity of the buildings themselves. Multi-level layouts, thick walls and complex designs can all impact network performance indoors.
The work follows a similar upgrade at London’s Stansted Airport, which reflected another collaboration with WIG to ensure seamless mobile coverage throughout all passenger and operational areas at the UK’s fourth busiest airport – serving over 29 million passengers annually.
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Craig Birchenough, CEO of Indoor Networks at WIG, said:
“[We’re] pleased to see EE’s mobile services now live on the system we recently delivered at Manchester Airport, ensuring their customers stay connected with access to the mobile apps and services that form a vital part of a modern travel experience. This project highlights the strength of our partnership with EE and demonstrates how high-quality connectivity in airport environments can deliver real, tangible benefits for people on the move.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
Used it myself, can confirm it works really well 😀
Quite confused as to why they’ve covered all three terminals, when T1 is meant to be closing in 2025.
T1 is a dump, I had the misfortune of flying out of there earlier this year, you can clearly see how little maintenance is being done on it in preparation for closing it down, the baggage reclaim hall has a leaky roof and buckets. I’d be amazed if they had bothered to install new kit in there. In any case, why 4G only in this day and age?
My destination airport, Tromso, had a nice touch in Eduroam wi-fi access, so I was able to connect to wi-fi immediately on arrival. More airports should do that.
T1 and T3 are both horrid.
T1 has felt like they’ve been running it into the ground for the last year or so. Last time we went through it was falling to bits and on departures the level of shops had gone down a lot, I guess everyone is working on the move to T2 later this year. They do look to have done something in T1 as I had an EE signal in the baggage hall the last couple of times, always was a black spot with EE.
The closure of T1 also looks more like a Heathrow T1 closure when you look into the details, they’ve said they are going to expand T3 using some of the T1 space. So like Heathrow the name goes but parts of it remain and get repurposed.
It would be nice if Vodafone would do the same. I work at the airport and the signal outside on the tarmac is dire and inside the building is non-existent. Staff WiFi which all airport staff relied on has become completely unusable too. Having complained to them they said they couldn’t do anything to help the signal inside and lo and behold, literally 24 hours after speaking to them again EE have done what VF and others need to do.
This is long overdue. I’ve turned up at MAN a few times and struggled to access a digital boarding pass or lounge access card.
I hope they’ve fixed the two most frustrating locations in terminal 2 which have had abysmal service – the check-in gates/security gates (wasting 5 minutes trying to get my security fast pass receipt up, only for them to just glance at it and not even scan the code) and the exit section after the departures gate (good luck booking an Uber until you actually make it outside)
EE was the only network to work for me.. 3 was no service, Vodafone has 1/2 bars of 4G but didn’t work and O2 also had 4G which didn’t work. EE easily got 250mbps+