Orange and T-Mobile customers have been able to utilise 2G signals on each operators networks since September 2010 as a result of the two companies, but today Everything Everywhere – parent company of both operators – has announced it will roll out 3G signals to all of its 27 million customers from next week.
The “big 3G switch-on” will allow customers on either network to benefit from faster data download speeds at no extra cost, providing data on either an Orange or T-Mobile network when the host network should be unavailable or out of range.
Everything Everywhere states that to better provide the best 2G and 3G network coverage, it will roll out improvements to its existing 2G infrastructure to allow its customers to continue to make voice calls in more places across the UK.
The company details the success of its interoperable networks:
Already, customers of each brand have shown the value in having access to each other’s networks, with 1.7 million days worth of calls (or almost 41 million hours) having been made on the other brand’s network, and almost five billion extra text messages having been sent and received since October last year – benefitting over 20 million people across the country.
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From next week, the company will begin to roll out its 3G networks region by region, a process that is expected to take a number of months to complete.
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