The borough of Swindon is to become the first area in the UK to be covered by a live commercial LTE network courtesy of the 4G network wholesaler UK Broadband. The service will be aimed predominantly at public sector and businesses via a fixed-wireless services, but local residents will be able to take advantage of the network through retail partnerships via Mifi type devices, which it said would be available from September.

The UK government has announced a plan to invest £100m ($156m) to create ten ‘super-connected’ cities equipped with high-speed broadband in the country. The announcement was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne in his Autumn Statement and forms part of a general £5bn increase in infrastructure spending, in an attempt to boost the UK’s stalling economy.

The UK’s incumbent mobile networks could be beaten to the LTE punch by Hong Kong based telecoms company PCCW, according to a report in the Financial Times. The operator is looking to build out an LTE network as early as 2012, the report states, via its British subsidiary UK Broadband.

UK wireless broadband provider UK Broadband, which operates under the brand ‘now’, is believed to be up for sale, after failing to compete effectively against its fixed line rivals. The service, based on UMTS-TDD also known as TD-CDMA, launched in London in 2005 under the name Netvigator but changed its name to ‘now’ to be [...]