BT, a British multinational telecommunications services company, with head offices in London, claims it will repeat its radical approach to television sports when it opens its own mobile network this year, raising the prospect of a price war for 4G services, The Telegraph newspaper quotes the company’s chief executive, Gavin Patterson, as saying they would “shake up” the mobile market in the same way their offer of free access to Premier League football on BT SportS (part of a broadband subscription) loosened BSkyB’s stranglehold on pay-TV.

BT will re-launch its mobile network for businesses within three months, and re-enter the consumer market by next April. It plans to use a mixture of technologies to challenge Britain’s four mobile operators -- EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – and has signed a deal to allow customers to use EE’s network. It will augment this with its existing network of 5.4m Wi-Fi hotspots and its own 4G network, which will use radio spectrum it got for £190 million ($261.4 million) at an Ofcom auction last year. BT plans to create its network by upgrading its customers’ Home Hub equipment to broadcast 4G as well as Wi-Fi signals.