93% of business leaders want 4G in the UK

New independent research of more than a thousand business leaders carried out by Coleman Parkes has found that 93% of UK businesses(1) want 4G rolled out as soon as possible, with 94% of the senior decision makers saying the UK needs it to remain competitive and protect jobs.

The survey, commissioned by Everything Everywhere, the UK's biggest communications company, also found that 86% of business leaders believe that access to a 4G network will increase their business productivity.

Martin Stiven, Vice President of B2B, Everything Everywhere commented: "In today's global economy, UK businesses need 4G networks to help them be more productive and compete on the international stage. Half of the countries on the G20 list of the world's biggest economies already have 4G, leaving British businesses at risk of falling behind rivals."

Additional survey findings include:

• Mobile devices are becoming essential to the working lives of Britons, with 72% of business leaders using the mobile internet on a daily basis for work purposes, such as checking email or accessing documents.  Nine out of ten do this at least once a week.
• Over half of respondents (52%) cite greater levels of flexible working as the primary expected benefit of a 4G network.
• Nearly a third (29%) of respondents recognise that the ability to engage with customers and colleagues through a variety of channels (including mobile TV, video conferencing, and through CRM applications) is the main benefit they expect from 4G.
• 27% of respondents said that the ability to securely update and access documents in the cloud will be what they will benefit most from when 4G becomes available in the UK.

Everything Everywhere runs a website at www.4Gbritain.org for organisations and individuals to learn more about 4G and say why they want it to come to the UK. There has been significant interest from the business community in the benefits that 4G will bring, and the website has added 10 new supporters including Capgemini, The Huffington Post, Morgan Sindall and several other SMEs across the country.

Brian O’Connor, Group IS Director, Morgan Sindall Group commented: "Within the Morgan Sindall Group we strive to provide a first class service to our clients and partners, and one of the core components of providing this service is the transmission of time critical data. With an annual turnaround of several hundred construction sites and a large mobile workforce we often cannot get reliable and speedy comms to key workers because broadband lines to sites take time, Wi-Fi is unavailable or unreliable in many areas, or the 2G or 3G technologies cannot cope with traffic requirements for mobile users. For this reason, amongst others, we believe a usable 4G network would provide a major improvement to critical information flows within the construction industry.”

–ends–

Notes to Editors
The study, carried out online by Coleman Parkes, consisted of 1,010 detailed interviews amongst senior decision makers in all forms of company in the UK.  The split between size of business was as follows:

About EE

EE is the most advanced digital communications company in Britain, providing mobile and fixed line services to 27 million customers, and will soon become the first company in the UK to provide 4G mobile services alongside fixed-line fibre.
EE is the company that runs the Orange and T-Mobile brands in the UK, and will be launching its new superfast 4G brand – EE – in the coming weeks.

Its 4G service will cover a third of the population by the end of 2012 and its fibre service will cover 50% of the population by the end of the year.

EE's mobile service currently provides coverage to 99% of the population with 2G and 98% of the population with 3G.