Mobile telecommunications provider Everything Everywhere has stated it is "absolutely focused" on the enterprise, in responding to recent comments from enterprise provider Teliqo accusing EE of being "crazy not to embrace" the enterprise side of the market with its 4G services.
"At EE we are absolutely focused on business with LTE," said Max Taylor, marketing director for business at EE. "We've currently got about 27 per cent market share in corporate, so we are a significant player, and since the launch of EE we've taken about a percentage point of market share on top. So we're seeing success and traction in the corporate space.
Further reading
EE 'crazy not to embrace the enterprise with high-speed 4G' says Teliqo EE to double 4G speeds in 10 UK cities by summer 2013 Everything Everywhere launches UK's first 4G network
"What businesses are after is a blend of good coverage and good capacity," said Taylor, "and average speeds are important.
"The message and feedback we're getting from our customers is that the most important benefit that has come out is the doubling of our average speeds, because many business applications require top speed of up to 130Mbps," argued Taylor.
"But doubling the average would be important because most applications will benefit from that. It also offers throughput advantages for particular sites, so with people using LTE close to a particular mast can get much more users through on a particular site."
Taylor echoed the company's earlier statement that EE now has 1,600 corporate contracts for LTE, but held fast that the company "is not releasing how many subscribers or connections are within that."
However, Taylor named several companies across "multiple sectors", including construction company Kia, Microsoft and estate agent Foxtons as companies benefitting directly from high-speed connections to office-based information. Supermarket chain Morrisons, Glasgow NHS and Gatwick Airport also are enjoying positive use cases, he said.
Since the April announcement, Taylor insisted EE has "done lots of follow-up stuff with our customers. We have about 250 sales guys out on the street account managing our customers and taking that message out."
EE is also about to start a new marketing campaign to publish its business use cases.
Taylor also refuted Teliqo's comments that EE is "showing no interest" in value-added elements to business contracts, particularly in MDM.
"We believe in MDM at deployment, to help customers understand the use case," said Taylor. "Our MDM service for any platform has data VPN and Mobile Iron."
EE is also still the only enterprise provider fully supporting BlackBerry's BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which Taylor says has "good" pickup so far.
"It's early days, we're about a month in, pipeline conversations are strong," said Taylor. "I'm hoping to announce the companies we're working with on that shortly."
