The trial of the high speed network will involve up to 100 mobile and 100 fixed line customers in Cornwall, or to be more specific St Newlyn, covering 25 square kilometres. The trial will begin in September and it will continue into early 2012.
An EE spokesperson said, "St Newlyn East was selected because it provides the right geography for this trial which is designed to test the viability of an alternative technology to deliver high speed broadband to customers in rural areas."
It is the first trial of 4G in the UK and will involve the two companies sharing their fixed telecommunications and mobile technology to provide high speed wireless broadband.
The 200 participants will incur no charge and engineers will install any necessary equipment including 4G dongles. Support will come from technology partners Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei.
You can register your interest now on a dedicated website and an EE spokesperson said, "People will need to register their interest by 30 June and we'd expect to confirm whether they've met the criteria by 31st July."
Apparently an initial test at BT's labs in Suffolk has already started with the field trial in Cornwall aiming to test the actual speeds of 4G broadband in real life situations using two 10MHz channels in the 800MHz spectrum.
In theory 4G can reach download speeds of up to 100Mbit/s and we're expecting Ofcom to hold an auction for 4G spectrum in the first quarter of 2012.
We asked what kinds of speeds they aim to achieved and a spokesperson for EE told us, "The LTE speeds that can be delivered in rural areas is one of the key data points we expect to get from the trial." It also said, "We'd rather confirm the answer once the trial is underway and we have data that's based on trial results."
