Vodafone 4G services are set to benefit from a £900 million investment by the operator on its network ahead of the expected launch later this summer.
The company acquired the most spectrum in the recent Ofcom 4G auction, paying out £802 million for a combination of 800MHz and 2.6GHz bandwidth.
It had been expected to offer 4G to customers early this summer, but it has now delayed the roll-out, possibly as late as September, to ensure it is able to offer the best possible service.
It had been suggested that Vodafone was waiting for Apple to announce a new iPhone that would be compatible with Vodafone’s LTE network as the current iPhone 5 only supports the 1800MHz airwaves used by the EE 4G network. However Vodafone has not commented on the suggestion that this is the reason behind the delay.
The planned investment could be funded by £4.5 billion dividends paid out by Verizon Wireless, its US joint-venture with Verizon Communications, which wants to buy out Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in the company for a reported £65 billion.
Investors will hope that when 4G does eventually launch it will provide a boost to the company’s balance sheet after it recorded a 4.2 percent year-on-year fall in revenue last month, blaming tough economic conditions in Southern Europe.
What do you know about UK mobile operators? Find out with our quiz!
Thoma Bravo agrees to acquire Darktrace for $5.32 billion in cash, delivering some welcome news…
Customer adoption of AI services embedded in cloud services continues to deliver results for Microsoft,…
TikTok's 'secret source' algorithm is so core to ByteDance, it would rather shut down US…
After relocating from California to Texas in 2020, Oracle's Larry Ellison now reveals plan to…
Share price hit after Meta admits heavy AI spending plans, after posting strong first quarter…
For third time Google delays phase-out of third-party Chrome cookies after pushback from industry and…