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EE trumpets its 4G success as sales soar [Daily Mail, London](Daily Mail (London, England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 23--Cheap mobile phones are prompting more people to sign up to superfast internet, Britain's biggest mobile group said. EE said it had attracted 5.6m customers to sign up for its 4G –fourth generation – service, including 1.4m in the last three months. It hopes to have 7m users on the broadband-speed network before the end of the year. 'There has been incredible appetite for EE-branded smartphones and tablets, which are at the entry price level,' said chief executive Olaf Swantee. Its phones are made by Huawei, the cut-price Chinese phone maker whose 4G-ready Kestrel handset sells for as little as pounds sterling 100. EE claimed it is now the largest 4G provider in Europe, having overtaken Germany's T-Mobile, which has just over 5m customers on the superfast network. EE's owners – Orange-owning France Telecom and Germany's Deutsche Telekom – are gearing up for an pounds sterling 11bn stock market float of the company. Plans for a listing were put on ice last year, but talks are understood to have been rekindled this month. The company is still struggling to eke out top-line growth. Its revenues fell 2.5pc to pounds sterling 1.6bn in the quarter, which the group blamed on regulation, while average revenue per user – a key industry metric known as ARPU – has been slowing. In the last quarter its ARPU grew by 1.6pc compared to the previous quarter's 2.7pc growth, and far below the 5.1pc growth in the first three months of the year. Analysts say float plans could be disrupted once BT enters the mobile market next year. BT is relaunching its consumer mobile division ten years after parting ways with Cellnet. EE was the first to launch 4G in the UK, and has stolen a march on rivals Vodafone and O2. ___ (c)2014 Daily Mail (London, ) Visit the Daily Mail (London, ) at www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html Distributed by MCT Information Services |