02 Ramps Up Investment In UK 3G Network

O2 have announced £100m worth of investment that will hopefully relieve the strain on the network, in particular, around London. £30 million of this funding is due before Christmas and will hopefully see an improvement in both call and data service.

The consistency and speed of 02 UK’s 3G network has been under strenuous criticism following the iPhone’s release and the abundance of data use that followed the smart phones arrival.

London does indeed appear to be on the receiving end of the majority of the investment with 40 new site builds planned to enhance capacity for the cities thriving iPhone user base.

For a considerable amount of time, iPhone users have had to deal with slow and unpredictable data connections and O2 have clearly taken this on with the latest announcement. O2 chief technology officer, Derek McManus, confirmed: ‘Typical symptoms include calls going straight to voice mail, dropped calls or difficulty in establishing a data connection.’

These issues have been occurring even with £500m investment in their network over the last two years which must lead to concerns of how out of shape the infrastructure was and still is.

McManus continues ‘In the last two years we have invested £500m in our network. We are now aggressively accelerating our network growth programme, increasing our spend by hundreds of millions over the next few years to ensure we build significant headroom for the future.’

With O2 ending their exclusivity over the iPhone earlier this month with Orange taking it on and Vodafone to follow suit, it will be imperative that their call and data services improve to avoid a mass exodus of customers.