Vodafone confirms five Midlands cities for 4G

The roll-out of 4G services across the UK is continuing to ramp up, with Vodafone confirming five further cities set to be connected to its network.

Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield will all get the faster data connections from 28 September.

The operator also revealed a further seven cities would be added to the network by the end of 2013 – Bradford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle – as it continued to build towards its promise to cover 89% of the population by 2015.

Vodafone launched its 4G network on 29 August, but only for its customers using their mobiles in London. On the same day, O2 launched its own 4G services, but rolled out to Leeds and Bradford as well as the capital. 

O2 also confirmed it would reach another 10 cities by the end of the year – Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Manchester and Edinburgh.

Both firms are far behind the progress of EE, however, which began rolling out its 4G services in 2012 after Ofcom allowed it to repurpose its existing spectrum to be used for the faster data connections. It is now live in more than 100 towns and cities in the UK – accounting for around 60% of the population – and yesterday confirmed it had signed up in excess of one million customers.

Three is the only network yet to launch 4G, but it has announced plans to go live in December 2013, promising no premium pricing and unlimited data allowances.