Boris J likens new EE logo to pollen count

Rating: Perils of celebrity endorsements

Mayor of London [England], Boris Johnson, had the assembled hacks at the Press launch of the Everything Everywhere rebranding launch in fits of laughter. Everything Everywhere had just boasted that its new name and logo, EE, was based on seeing the whole world as a number of connected molecules. Unfortunately, the UK largest mobile network operator with some 27 million customers had picked a loose cannon in the shape of maverick politician, Johnson, to provide a celebrity endorsement. Boris promptly repaid the favour by referring to the logo as being based on the pollen count. There’s a moral in here, somewhere.Joking aside, it does seem that the then CEO of Everything Everywhere had finally got his way over the naming of his company which is the result of an Orange/T-Mobile merger.

There had been a great deal of speculation over the brand name which his company would pick to launch its 4G offering.

It had become clear that the intention was to come up with a new brand.

Whilst most observers favoured 4G Everywhere as the potential brand name, picking a simple name like EE seems a better idea.

Interestingly, this event has highlighted the fact that there will have to be a second media frenzy organised by EE to launch its actual 4G offering to consumers some time between today [September 11th 2012] and Xmas.

Significantly, EE did actually demo its 4G network as working on handsets supplied by Huawei and HTC.

Olaf Swantee, EE’s CEO, didn’t commit to an actual launch date, however.

Logically, however, it should be late October or early November in time to hit the crucial Xmas buying spree.

What GoMobile News finds somewhat disturbing is that Everything Everywhere had painted its request to Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, to launch 4G in the 1800 MHz spectrum as being a boost for rural communities.

In reality, it looks like EE will concentrate on selling 4G devices to consumers in the four cities where its network has already gone live: – Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and London.

Here at GoMobile Towers we find it hard to see how handing what is already the UK’s largest mobile operator a massive commercial advantage in being able to sell 4G devices in time for Xmas 2012.

The UK government has yet to licence the remaining three mobile operators: – 3UK, O2, and Vodafone, for 4G operations in the 800 MHz spectrum.

Why should 3UK, for example, pay big bucks for additional 4G spectrum when it will eventually inherit 1800 MHz spectrum which EE has been told to sell off?

The biggest losers here are Vodafone and O2 which don’t have masses of 1800 MHz spectrum to toy with. So it is800 MHz or 2.6 GHz for them, or nothing.

The UK government could have shot itself in the foot thanks to Ofcom’s decision to allow LTE at 1800 MHz.

Surely, the government has devalued the value of 4G spectrum when two out of the UK’s four operators don’t actually need it?