EE confirmed that, of its total £1.5 billion network investment, over one third will support the company’s ambition to reach new standards in phone call quality and reliability.
Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE, said: “While we consistently outperform on the standard UK benchmark for voice call quality and reliability, I don’t believe the benchmark is right. I think the UK mobile industry can do better, and we intend to improve the experience for our customers, taking our quality and reliability to levels to those achieved by other operators across Europe.
“This year, we have been focusing a large amount of our activity and investment on offering consumers the most reliable, highest quality phone call experience. I’m proud to say that we have reached our highest ever call success rate - 99.2% - while carrying over one billion calls every week. But we can go even further.
“For the majority of our customers, being able to make a phone call when they need to is still the vital aspect of the mobile experience. Innovative, high-speed data services receive most of the attention in the mobile industry as they are changing the way people communicate, connect, trade and interact. However, we carried more voice calls on our network than ever before this year, and we know that call reliability is essential for our customers. That’s why we plan to invest £275m in our voice call service in 2014 as we strive to set new standards in call quality and reliability.”
The investment commitment builds on EE’s 2013 voice service enhancement, which resulted in the mobile operator’s highest ever call success rate, despite the number of calls on the network increasing.