BT rumoured to announce 4G service this week

Six weeks after acquiring mobile network EE for £12.5bn, BT is set to launch its own 4G network this week, according to a report on the Daily Telegraph.

It is understood the service, likely to be formally announced mid-week, will be called BT Mobile and will only be on offer to the company’s 7.6 million broadband subscribers at launch.

EE is the largest mobile network operator in the UK with 31 million customers of which 24.5 million are direct mobile customers and 834,000 are fixed broadband customers. It has the largest 4G customer base of any operator in Europe.

The takeover, which was announced last month and is in the early regulatory stages, includes BT selling its broadband, fixed telephony and pay-TV services to those EE customers who do not currently take a service from BT.

According the Telegraph, BT’s service will undercut 4G packages from O2 and Vodafone, as well as EE, but will not be as low-priced as the cheapest bundles from Giffgaff and Three.

The report also suggests that the service will not be aggressively marketed in the first instance, and that the telecoms giant will wait until the end of the current football season before giving it a harder push.

It is expected that BT Mobile will eventually be sold as part of a quad-play bundle – including broadband, TV and landline services.

The BT and EE transaction is subject to approval by the shareholders of BT and merger clearance, in particular from the UK Competition and Markets Authority. It is expected to complete before the end of BT’s 2015/16 financial year.