O2 and Vodafone will jointly develop their 5G offering to include superfast mobile data at their shared radio network sites. The partnership means more customers over a wider geographic area will be able to take advantage of faster network speeds at a lower cost.
"I'm excited by the potential of these plans to meet the future needs of our customers while delivering value for our business," said Mark Evans, CEO at Telefnica UK (02's is the company's trading name). "In addition, these plans would allow us to utilise the spectrum we acquired in the last auction very effectively."
As well as working together to improve their joint networking sites, O2 and Vodafone will also develop their individual networks across 2,500 sites, covering 15% of the total networking sites outside of London.
The two telecoms firms will also upgrade their transmission networks to fibre optic cables, offering power latency data transfers. It will also give the opportunity for the companies to develop future plans surrounding other technologies that would benefit customers.
The joint venture will operate under the CTIL umbrella company that manages the companies' tower networks. In future, CTIL will explore further partnerships with third parties to grow the firm's reach further.
"We believe that these plans will generate significant benefits for our business and our customers as we move into the digital era of connected devices, appliances and systems on a mass scale," said Nick Jeffery, CEO at Vodafone UK.
"Customers will benefit from the best 5G experience available and we will deliver even faster speeds by using our spectrum holding more effectively."
