O2 said that it plans to accelerate growth of its mobile network and build headroom for mobile data, in a multi-year programme of investment totaling hundreds of millions of pounds.
The planned investment will cover upgrade of the current radio network and also the delivery of new sites. 200 sites will be delivered in London in the next 12 months, 40 of which will be live by Christmas 2009. In 2010, other areas of the UK will see similar developments with a total of 1500 new network sites, the company said.
Derek McManus, CTO of O2 in the UK, said: “Anticipating growth in demand for mobile services, we have quarter on quarter increased investment in our voice and data networks. Our £500m investment over the last two years has enabled us to offer our customers the best products in the world, including the Apple iPhone and Palm Pre.
“In the past 12 months the mobile industry has seen an unprecedented change in demand. The introduction of world-class devices, in combination with a wide variety of data applications, has brought about a dramatic change in customer behaviour and created an exponential demand on mobile data networks. We are now aggressively accelerating our network growth programme to ensure we have significant headroom for the future and retain our focus on being number one for customer satisfaction.”
In March 2009, O2 and Vodafone have announced a strategic partnership to share network infrastructure across the UK. 100 joint sites are now live in the programme with more planned for roll-out in 2010.
