Britain\'s cellco Vodafone UK has announced that it has signed up more than half a million customers for 4G services in a six-month period, TeleGeography reported on Tuesday. The company said that its 4G customers use twice as much data as those with 3G, on average, and in December 2013 alone, they used 300 TB of data in all. These subscribers are said to be using twice as much music and video streaming, video calling, online shopping and online banking, on average, and the operator has set a target of 98 percent population coverage, by 2015.

It announced its 4G plans in August 2013 and opened its LTE network, on August 29, the same day as its rival O2 UK, covering the cities of Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield. In October 2013 it announced that, following an expansion of its 4G network across the greater London area, its infrastructure at the time covered more than 80 towns and districts, \'from Harlow in the north to Dorking in the south, and from Dartford in the east to Windsor in the west\'. That same month saw Vodafone announce that it had signed 100,000 subscribers to its \'Red 4G\' plan.