3G sharing begins next week for Orange/T-Mobile Everything Everywhere customers

The next phase of the Everything Everywhere T-Mobile and Orange merger kicks in next week, with the two networks set to begin sharing their 3G infrastructure across their combined 27 million customer base.

First announced as part of the new partnership revealed in September 2010, the roll-out will take a few months to spread across the country.

“This is a significant achievement and demonstrates the latest milestone in our network vision and customer promise – to provide more things, to more people in more places than any other company in Britain”, said Olaf Swantee, CEO of Everything Everywhere.

“Customers are always on the move and demanding instant access to information wherever they are. Not only will customers be able to talk in places they weren’t able to before, they’ll also now be able to access the Internet, social networks or download emails at improved speeds, in more places.”

Those looking to benefit from the new shared infrastructure need only opt-in following a text-message alert, as well as making sure roaming is enabled on their handsets.

The newly merged networks should lead to greater reliability when it comes to call quality, lowering the number of dropped-calls and increasing the area where users can enjoy mobile broadband access.