2 
Ofcom’s released its draft annual plan for the 2012-2013 period and there’s bad news for those eagerly awaiting 4G networks within the UK. The telecoms regulator has penned “wide availability” of 4G coverage within the year 2015, not 2013/2014 as we were all hoping.
Of course that doesn’t mean some lucky first adopters won’t be able to take advantage of the initial steps of the UK’s LTE networks, as roll out is expected within 2013-2014; but Ofcom, probably wisely, is anticipating the wide-spread roll out of service by all the networks to take quite some time. We already knew the UK was well behind quite a few places in the world, let alone our American cousins, but 2015 for proper, competitive 4G coverage — that’s going to be a hell of a long wait. Let’s just hope they don’t go down the American route and just cover the big cities, leaving those out in the sticks or smaller towns, fat out of luck. [Ofcom, Ofcom Draft Annual Plan (PDF) via Engadget]
Image credit: 4G from Shutterstock
Report: 35MM Projection Could Be Gone by 2015
WideAngle, Tunable, and More
1996: The Internet, According to Playboy
So by 2015, will 5G be starting to roll out around the world with the UK only just sorting out 4G?
The US will certainly have 5G by 2015, but only because Japan will have “LightSpeed” Broadband by then.
And by that time you should just about be getting 3G Woody.
I think we’ll have just about ironed out the problems with our glorious 2G network by then
Anyone recieve theres in the post yet? :/ Im hoping this ‘trial’ lasts a lonnnng time.
Not yet :/ Did they say when they will start sending them out? I am also hoping they keep the trial going after the Olympics end.
Not received it yet, they said they are sending them out this week. Pretty sure its only 3 month trial though. Hope I’m wrong!
Easy way to extend the trial. If you all keep reporting “mysterious outages” affecting all of you at the same time, they will have to keep testing the network.
Yeah, the trial is for 12 weeks. They will have to stop the trials during the olympics as their 4G band was reserved by olympics’ organisers but hopefully they will resume after.
Shall we update each other here on the deliveries?
Probably the best bet would be if you e-mail Sam or Kat so they can start an official “DongleWatch” post.
No dongle here yet either (Thanks again for picking me GizmodoUK! Extremely excited!).
I think updating each other on deliveries is a great idea! Maybe once we all receive our 4G test kit, we could do a mini meet or something, few drinks, and maybe some test downloading, multiplayer stuff etc…
O2 just called. Dongle by tomorrow afternoon!
Great news. Thanks for letting us know! Hopefully they will send out all of them today as I haven’t had that O2 call yet.
I was told it was going to be this week too, so fingers crossed! I believe the short delay was because they were finalising paperwork etc — there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, let me tell you
Well they mainly called to confirm my last name because having a long weird one with chicken scratch handwriting probably didn’t help much.
Dongle’s here. Anyone else?
Got mine too. No signal in the flat although it seems to be in the right area on the map. Will try in the office shortly. Anyone knows if external aerial will work to get signal?
No dongle for me yet. No phone call either
Oh well… at least we have Virgin’s 1.5Gbps at the office…
I didn’t have a phone call either so the dongles are probably coming for the rest today/tomorrow. I have no signal in my office in Canary Wharf either so maybe the site is not live yet here…
Mine arrived Thursday. Only picking up a few bars in Angel but still faster than my wifi! Looking forward to trying it with even better signal.
Then it stopped working for me for around ano hour yesterday, don’t know if it was on my end or the network end…. would be good if there was a discussion forum for everyone on the trial…
Well, as i was saying to O2 Rob at #giz4gparty, we still don’t have blanket coverage for 3G so i’m not going to get excited about 4G any time soon. 2015 seems likely and even then i wouldn’t expect to have it everywhere i’d want it.
Looking forward to getting the dongle, hopefully this week!
Good job then that Everything Everywhere have it ready to go as soon as they get the go ahead, if they get that this year like anticipated, Orange and T-Mobile customers can get it sooner!