The telecoms company EE has unveiled what it claims is the world’s first petabyte (PB) mobile data bundle for business. The one-million-gigabyte option is the largest in a range of shared data bundles that starts at 50 terabytes (TB).
The firm says its service is in response to corporate and public bodies, and for data-intensive industries such as CCTV that are looking for an alternative to satellite and cable uplinks.
Super Bundles are available in 50TB, 100TB, 200TB, 500TB and 1PB units. Each data bundle has no expiry date and is not subject to sharer fees.
EE predicts that businesses will consume 860 per cent more data on mobile devices by 2016. A 3G mobile data fleet of 2,500 users typically uses up to 200TB over a 36-month contract period. Over 4G, data usage is likely to increase to around 600TB. EE’s customers report they find it difficult to anticipate how their mobile data usage will grow in the medium-term and flexibility in data sharing is a growing concern. Super Bundles are designed to help businesses address this need and to get full value out of the data allowances they purchase.
Kester Mann, senior analyst at CCS Insight, said: “EE’s ground-breaking tariffs position it to capitalise on the huge increase in demand for data services expected from 4G enterprise consumers in the UK. These vast data allowances will provide businesses with an important competitive edge through increased productivity and cost savings. Further, their greater flexibility will suit many companies that regularly see fluctuations in data usage among the workforce.”
Super Bundles, costing £8 per gigabyte for a petabyte of data, could save broadcasters as much as £12m when using that amount of data, it is claimed. As well as cost savings, broadcasters will no longer have to book data uplinks in advance. They simply use a mobile Wi-Fi device for an instant superfast data connection over 4G.
EE’s 4G network is available in 20 cities across Britain, offering average upload speeds of 12-15 Mbps. EE says that it’s investing £1.5 billion over three years.
From 5 November, the company will trial a 300Mbps network enabled by carrier aggregation, a feature of LTE-Advanced that combines spectrum from different bands.
Max Taylor, Director of Corporate Business at EE, said: “British businesses are transforming the way they work with new 4G mobile technology, cloud computing and collaboration tools. In light of these trends and with LTE-Advanced at up to 300Mbps on the horizon, we forecast corporate data consumption will grow by 860 per cent over the next three years. Armed with more spectrum holding, and subsequently more network capacity than any other UK operator, we are introducing our Super Bundles for businesses that want to transform mobile working for their employees and need a simple, scalable solution.”
EE’s one-year-old 4G network has attracted 3,200 corporate customers that include companies such as Canon, Expedia and Kimberly-Clark.
