EE have dropped a huge 400 new small cell sites in the UK. The newest among the places to receive these sites are Birmingham, Sheffield and Brighton.
As well as places with year-round demand, EE are preparing for summer by offering a connectivity boost to summer hotspots, such as Newquay, Salcombe and Southend-on-sea. This really shows EE’s pledge to giving the entire UK a better experience with their services.
So, what are these small cell sites? Small cell sites enhance data and allow for a better connection even in areas that usually suffer from congestion, such as major cities. They currently carry 20TB of data everyday. That’s equivalent to 8,000 hours of HD video, or 280,000 hours of music. That being said, there’s plenty of data to go around even the busiest of areas.
How are they putting these up? And where?
The small cell sites are set up using infrastructure that’s already there. That’s structures like telephone boxes, lamp posts, CCTV columns and BT’s Street Hubs. This means that there’s space for these small cells everywhere, and they can benefit towns and cities all over the UK. When setting these small cells up, EE brings Nokia along to establish the 4G small cell, which couples its licensed 1800MHz and 2600Mhz spectrum with unlicensed 5GHz spectrum.
So, how do they know where to put these small cells? Well, they say that ‘advanced network analytics’ highlight problem areas for shoddy connection or congestion that could use a boost.
“As demand for data continues to rise, small cells are becoming an increasingly integral part of our mobile network. Our partnership with Nokia ensures customers continue to benefit from our fastest 4G speeds even at the busiest times and in the most congested of locations, and we’re proud to pass another milestone in this project as we continue to invest in improving the UK’s best mobile network* up and down the country.”
Newcastle recently benefited from these small cell sites around particularly congested areas such as the city centre and university, greatly improving data quality in the area.
Cllr Alex Hay, a Newcastle City Council Cabinet member for a Resilient City, had this to say: “We’re really pleased to be working with EE to improve infrastructure and increase digital connectivity across the city. Matchdays see more than 50,000 people concentrated in a small area, and anyone who has attended football matches and other large events will know it can be difficult to obtain a mobile signal in those environments. By enabling the use of our assets for EE to deploy small cells, we’re boosting connectivity and giving residents and visitors alike an improved experience in our city.”
