3UK this week revealed that the rollout of an extra 5 MHz of 1800-MHz spectrum across its network will enable it to boost 4G speeds by as much as 50%.
The U.K. mobile operator has activated the additional spectrum at all of its sites in the north of England and the West Midlands, as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland. The rest of the U.K., including London will follow at a later date.
3UK acquired the spectrum in question from EE a number of years ago, and is finally able to use it.
In order to gain European Commission approval for their 2010 U.K. merger that eventually became know as EE, Orange and T-Mobile agreed to sell 2×15 MHz of 1800-MHz spectrum to 3UK in 2012.
10 MHz of those frequencies were freed up in 2013, enabling 3 to launch LTE services in December that year. EE was required to hand over the final 5 MHz this year.
"This programme is part of a drive to further improve reliability on the data network, which carried 42% of U.K. mobile data traffic in the year-ending March 2015," 3 said in a statement, citing research from Enders Analysis.
The operator said average mobile data usage per customer stood at 4.65 GB per month in mid-2015.
"The deployment will also help to further improve reliability by adding some much needed capacity in congested areas," it said.
