UK : Orange announced it will be transforming its 3G network across Scotland, Northern Ireland and North-East England. The improved 3G network infrastructure will bring faster and even more reliable voice and data services to the different locations.

The enhanced network in Scotland, Northern Ireland and North-East England will enable Orange customers, living, working or travelling across these areas to experience faster 3G data service. Further enhancements include:

· More reliable combined voice and data service

· 99% call set-up success rate

· Faster variant of 3G/HSDPA will be rolled out and will support mobile broadband in the very near future

 

The Orange 3G network includes cities and towns, as well as major roads, rail routes, business parks, conference centres, hotels and airports. 3G access is really important to Orange and its customers as more and more people rely on both voice and data communications while out and about for work or pleasure.

“A robust and reliable network is at the heart of everything we do at Orange and we are dedicated to ensuring our customers in each and every region of the UK feel the benefit of this. We are investing heavily to improve our network and this investment is one step closer to our goal of becoming the best UK network for coverage and reliability by 2009,” said Peter Marsden, vice president IT & Networks.

Orange 2G/3G and HSDPA network need to knows:

· Orange has the largest integrated 3G/2.5G network in the UK covering 99% of the UK population

· Orange invests over £1million every working day to develop the network

· Orange will be installing over 450 new 2G and 3G sites over the next 12 months to ensure customers can make calls, send texts and access mobile broadband

· Orange is working towards its 3G/HSDPA network speed targets of up to 7.2Mbps in the top 30 UK cities; 2Mbps for 80% of entire UK population and will start rolling out a staggering 14.4Mbps by the end of 2009

While the 3G network improvement takes place any vital downtime in each of the regions will be fully communicated to all customers well in advance. The 2G network will still be available throughout the process and the changes will have limited affect on 2G access or voice calls. Orange network engineers will be hard at work to ensure there is minimum disruption to customers and once complete, customers will not have to do a thing apart from enjoy an even better 3G service from Orange.