EE has 25 live small cells on Freshwave's London network

While it's not a huge number of sites to shout about, the announcement nonetheless serves as a vote of confidence for the neutral host model. EE appears to be ahead of its rivals in terms of rollout on this particular network, but it's not the only one getting in on the act.

EE was the first UK mobile operator to go live on the Freshwave London network as long ago as December 2022. It essentially served as a reference operator for the neutral host's then new network, which it claimed was the first in the country to be able to host all four mobile network operators.

Three of the big four signed up to the pilot. Virgin Media O2 went live in early 2023, with Vodafone due to follow suit in short order, although we haven't heard much from it in the interim. Doubtless it is busy bemoaning the difficulties of rolling out a mobile network all by itself in a bid to curry favour with regulators for its proposed merger with Three...which also does not seem to have joined the Freshwave party.

EE is firmly on board, although it and Freshwave are being a little cagey with the data thus far. We're not sure how many small cells went live when EE flipped the switch almost two years ago on an unspecified number of sites along Queen Victoria Street, an area whose macro site saw high demand at busy times. All we know now is that across all of the sites in the initial pilot, EE is now seeing up to 7.5 TB of data downloaded per week, which is doubtless easing congestion on the macro network.

The pilot went so well that EE is now talking up 25 new live sites "strategically located" in London's Square Mile, including locations such as St Paul’s Cathedral, Cannon Street and the Bank of England. The sites are providing additional capacity on both 4G and 5G.

EE has not had a lot to say on the matter, other than sharing the usual comments about high demand for data from its customers.

"Outdoor small cells are an important part of our mobile network and we're happy to be extending our work with Freshwave using their cutting-edge approach," said James Hope, Director of Mobile Radio Access Networks at EE, in a canned statement.

But we can probably expect to hear more from both the telco and Freshwave in fairly short order.

The firms said there are "dozens" of new sites currently being built for EE to cover even more of the Square Mile. We don't have a timeframe for when they will go live – and to be fair, progress to date hasn't been the fastest – but there are plans underway to bring them online "in the future."

The lack of action from the UK's other MNOs could be seen as something of a negative, although there have been small cells projects elsewhere in the country, including an announcement from Virgin Media O2 in June that it would roll out 20 small cells with Freshwave in Manchester.

And for its part, Freshwave is pushing on with its bid to get all four UK network operators to play nicely together; in July it presented an indoor solution that housed equipment from them all.

The neutral host model is coming. Just not particularly quickly.