Vodafone UK has announced a major network investment across Southampton, bringing stronger indoor and outdoor coverage and mobile internet services across its 3G and 4G networks. The multi-million pound investment across the city will extend 3G and 4G mobile coverage to more than 98% of Southampton’s population.
As a consequence of recent network improvements, mobile data traffic in Southampton has already rocketed. Customers in Southampton, on average, are using over a terabyte of data every day, which is comparable to watching an episode of “24: Live Another Day” 2000 times or listening to the entire soundtrack from first series around 6000 times*. The majority of data usage spikes in the area appear to be sport related, with the equivalent data usage of 80,000 hours of web browsing* on the day of the recent Southampton Half Marathon.
The upgrade forms part of Vodafone’s approximate £2 billion nationwide network and service investment across 2014 and 2015. This investment is already benefitting customers in the city, a fact endorsed by results from independent technology consultancy LCC, which show that Vodafone has unbeatable indoor and outdoor 4G coverage in the city**. The recent strengthening of our 3G network across the city has also already provided greater coverage, HD technology for voice calls and faster mobile internet services to more consumers and businesses.
A snapshot of Vodafone in Southampton
The company is aiming to upgrade all of its sites across the city which involves replacing old technology with new. This creates better indoor and outdoor coverage for both voice and data, whilst ensuring that concentrated areas of customers have the highest network capacity to cope with increased demand. Overall, producing a much better network experience in busy areas which could benefit special events this summer.
The average data traffic a week in Southampton is equal to browsing the internet for 520,000 hours*- that’s equivalent to surfing the web for nearly sixty years.
The commitment to substantial investment in the area also stretches to Vodafone stores with plans for the Southampton store, located at Above Bar, to be refitted with a brand new look later in the year.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
- *based on one hour of streaming music being around 150MB and 1 hour of streaming non HD video equating to 250MB-1GB as collated by http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/guides/broadband/guide-to-internet-data-usage
- **4G coverage assessed by LCC between January and March 2015 against key competitors with 4G coverage.
- Vodafone has expanded its ultrafast 4G coverage to 535 larger cities, towns and districts as well as thousands of smaller communities across the UK. For more information on our 4G coverage visit www.vodafone.co.uk/4g.
- Customers can check Vodafone’s current and planned coverage at http://www.vodafone.co.uk/our-network-and-coverage/uk-coverage-map/index.htm
- Coverage predictions are based on an assumption that Vodafone can obtain planning permission to build sites, access to land or buildings to place equipment and backhaul to connect sites.
- Vodafone 4G is typically 3.6 times faster than our 3G. Speeds vary and depend on coverage and demand. For more information visit www.vodafone.co.uk/4g (Ookla 2015)
- 4G devices are available for review on request.
