EE prices 4G services from £36 a month

By Katherine Rushton, Media, telecoms and technology editor

The company, which owns the Orange and T-Mobile brands, said it was on a mission to make a land-grab for as many customers as it could before rivals Vodafone, Three and O2 are able to launch their rival 4G services.

Ealier this year, EE was granted a controversial head start by regulator Ofcom in the roll out of 4G services, giving it a six-month lead on the other mobile phone operators, who need to buy more airwave capacity before they can launch their own 4G services. EE will launch 4G on 30 October and roll the services out to 16 cities by the end of the year.

“We want to be in a position where as many customers as possible can [access the web from their mobiles] as quickly as possible,” said Olaf Swantee, EE’s chief executive. “Everyone always says it is a six-month opportunity but I don’t know if it is six months or five years.”

Pippa Dunn, chief marketing officer, added that it had deliberately priced the service as “a mass market proposition”.

However, the cost of 4G will escalate for customers exceeding a relatively modest amount of internet usage, of 500 megabytes a month. EE will charge users £56 a month for bumper data packages of eight gigabytes a month - a tariff that could be offputting to the majority of customers but is likely to attract heavy internet users that are amongst the most valuable customers.

Mr Swantee said a lot of businesses were interested in the 4G packages as a way of getting more work out of their employees. /Telegraph