Locations Offices EE has main offices in London,
Bristol,
Darlington,
Doxford,
Greenock,
Merthyr Tydfil,
North Tyneside,
Plymouth and
Leeds. In June 2016, it was announced that EE was making preparations to move from its offices in Paddington to
BT Centre at the end of year, as part of BT's plans to save £360 million a year following its acquisition of EE. The move began in November 2016.
Retail shops , London, 2016. In November 2010, EE announced the opening of six "dual-branded" shops: three were led by T-Mobile and three by Orange, and each promoted the other brand's products. The company expanded further in early 2011. The company removed these concessions from HMV shortly before the re-brand, with their approximately 100 staff transferred to local shops. EE had 700 shops in the UK after the re-branding of existing Orange, T-Mobile, and Everything Everywhere shops in October 2012. In January 2013, it was announced that EE would close 78 shops, with no job losses, because in several locations there were two on the same street, often close together. In January 2014, it was announced that EE would close a further 76 duplicated shops and there would be 50 new ones, including 30 franchise outlets, estimated to create 350 jobs. The franchise outlets would grow to 100 by the end of the year, including the transfer of 45 directly managed shops to franchise partners. The move saw its number of shops reduce from 600 to 574 (including the 100 franchise outlets). In September 2014, it was announced that following the collapse of
Phones 4u in the UK, EE would acquire 58 of its shops for £2.5 million in a deal with its administrators,
PricewaterhouseCoopers. The deal safeguarded 359 jobs and the shops would be rebranded to EE. In July 2017, EE announced 100
store-within-a-store outlets by the end of 2019 via a partnership with
Sainsbury's. This would create 400 jobs in Sainsbury's and
Argos stores, and see the number of outlets reach close to 700, as part of its ambition to provide 95% of the population with access to an EE shop within 20 minutes' drive. In addition, pop-up shops and cabins would appear in shopping centres and other locations around the UK, and mobile EE shops in vans would serve customers in the most remote areas.
Network EE owns and operates national
2G,
4G and
5G mobile phone networks in the UK. On 22 June 2010, Everything Everywhere announced plans to roll out
HD voice calling throughout its network by the end of summer. The technology was initially trialled on Orange's network in
Bristol,
Reading and
Southampton, before it was expanded to the rest of the UK by the end of summer. Its request to use its surplus capacity to launch 4G services in the UK was approved by
Ofcom on 21 August 2012. As part of Ofcom's approval of the company's roll-out of 4G, it was announced on 22 August 2012 that
Hutchison 3G had acquired part of Everything Everywhere's 1,800 MHz spectrum. EE's 4G network, along with its nationwide marketing campaign and store re-branding, was launched on 30 October 2012; it was the UK's first 4G mobile network, while other networks rolled out their 4G networks well into 2013. 4G coverage was initially "switched on" in 11 UK cities; London, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and Southampton. During the latter part of 2012 and 2013, the company added more cities and towns, and planned to boost speeds in some existing locations by Summer 2013. EE claims of 4G network would be added every month from launch and the goal was to cover 70 per cent of the population by the end of 2013, and 90 per cent by the end of 2014. EE had early problems and issues of no signal across both its 3G and 4G networks with senior EE staff conceding they were facing 'teething problems'. On 20 February 2013, Ofcom announced that EE had been awarded more 4G spectrum in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands, bidding around £588 million for the spectrum. On 5 November 2013, EE began testing
LTE Advanced (LTE-A) in
East London Tech City. The LTE-A network offered speeds up to 300 Mbit/s when rolled out to the public in 2014. EE's LTE-Advanced was launched at the end of October 2014. On 12 February 2016, EE announced that it had reached its 2015 targets to double the number of 4G users on its network to 14 million at the year's end and remains as Europe's largest 4G operator. Its
4G network now reaches more than 95% of the UK population, with double speed 4G reaching 80%. EE's
3G network reaches 98% of the population while its
2G network reaches 99%. On 13 September 2017, it was announced that EE are upgrading its 4G network by converting airwaves from 2G to 4G. It currently uses frequencies in the 1,800 MHz band for both 2G and 4G (its other bands are reserved solely for 3G/4G) and is converting – or 'refarming' 10 MHz of the 2G airwaves and adding that to the existing 20 MHz slice that's already configured for 4G. More than 600 sites across cities including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff, will be upgraded with the latest 4G spectrum over the next six months, equipped with 'Cat 12' and 'Cat 16' modems which will provide better speeds and coverage and support next generation 'CAT 12' and 'CAT 16' smartphones. The data upload speeds will also be doubled from the current maximum of 50 Mbit/s to up to 100 Mbit/s on more than 900 sites across the UK. It is also expanding its UK-wide 4G+ with more than 1,000 sites supporting 'Cat 9' speeds above 400 Mbit/s. The geographic reach of its 4G network is now 85%. On 19 March 2018, it was announced that EE had filled of mobile not-spots in the last 12 months as part of its 4G geographic reach strategy of 95% by 2020, currently 90%. This involved upgrading more than 4,000 existing
sites to provide 4G, and the construction of 105 new sites which are spread across
Northern England,
North Wales and
Scotland and is in the process of building a further 350 new sites to continue filling in mobile not-spots. Many of these new sites are in areas that have previously had no coverage from any operator and have already carried more than 200
emergency 999 calls where people would have previously been unable to call for help. The new sites are being built to provide coverage for EE's customers and for the Emergency Services Network. The geographic reach of its 4G network in Scotland surpassed 75% at the end of 2017. On 11 September 2018, it was announced that EE are upgrading its 4G network by converting airwaves from 3G to 4G. It currently uses frequencies in the 2,100 MHz band for 3G and is converting – or 'refarming' it for 4G. More than 500
sites will be upgraded in the next six months and are the busiest 'hotspots' in its network where there is the greatest demand for
mobile data. These sites are spread across cities including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Exeter, Hull, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast. In addition to providing better speeds and reliability, these sites will provide five 'carriers' of 4G which is more than any other UK operator and accommodate the latest smartphones which can support connections to all five at the same time, with Five Carrier Aggregation (5 CA). It also lays the foundation for its
5G network that will be launched in 2019 where it will be built on top of the upgraded sites. EE completed the switch-off of its 3G network in February 2024.
Smart number technology On 11 June 2018, EE became the first UK network to launch
smart number technology, allowing customers to use the same number across multiple devices in addition to their
smartphones including
tablets,
smartwatches and
laptops. It is available at no extra cost to new and existing customers and is part of its strategy to "keep customers connected by bringing together the best of mobile and broadband through first-of-their-kind converged services across the UK". It supports calls and texts across multiple devices and works even when they do not have their smartphone with them. It supports up to 5 other connected devices and will need to be internet connected via Wi-Fi or mobile, with the primary device being connected to the EE network for the service to work. Calls can be made on multiple devices at the same time, or handed off between devices. It is available initially on
Apple devices, with
Android devices coming at a later date. Customers will need to be on an EE pay monthly plan on their smartphone with minimum
iOS 11.3 on
iPhone 6 or later. Paired
iPads and
Macs will need to be on minimum
iOS 10 and
OS X El Capitan respectively,
iPod Touch with minimum iOS 10 and
Apple Watch with minimum
watchOS 2. EE is also the only UK network to support the full connected capability of the
Apple Watch Series 3. In December 2024, EE switched off Smart Number for its users, stating that iCloud calling and watch functionality wouldn’t be affected by this change.
Virtual network agreements The Co-operative Mobile operate on the EE network under a
MVNO agreement, which was most recently renegotiated in December 2010 for Virgin, and November 2013 for Asda (which had previously operated on the
Vodafone network, however the agreement ended in March 2021 where ASDA Mobile returned to using the Vodafone network).
BT Mobile and EE also have an MVNO agreement, which has allowed
BT Mobile to offer packages since March 2014. EE purchased LIFE Mobile in October 2014, a MVNO set up by
Phones 4u in 2013 from
PWC.
Mobile Broadband Network Limited On 3 September 2010, Everything Everywhere announced that Orange would join
Mobile Broadband Network Limited (MBNL), the
3G network sharing
joint venture formed in December 2007 between T-Mobile UK and Hutchison 3G UK (H3G UK). MBNL would become a 50:50 joint venture between Everything Everywhere and Three UK, with Orange contributing several thousand of its base stations for network sharing purposes. MBNL was created after T-Mobile and Three UK agreed to pool their respective 3G infrastructures in a 50:50 joint venture. By September 2010 MBNL's HSPA-based infrastructure covered more than 90% of the British population, and was expected to rise to more than 98% by the end of 2010.
Television EE launched a TV service for broadband customers in November 2014. Using an EE-branded
set-top box, it offered standard
Freeview channels through an aerial connection along with
PVR features and catch-up TV services, competing against
YouView. In June 2019 the service was replaced with a new package using an
Apple TV box, which also gives access to
BT Sport. ==Marketing==