EE steps up content play with free BT Sports offer

EE enriched its content offering in order to attract more subscribers to its LTE services by offering free access to BT Sport for six months.

The UK-based mobile operator, which was recently acquired by BT from Deutsche Telekom and Orange, said new and existing pay monthly customers would be able to take up the offer. Once the six months has expired, the service will cost £5 (€5.84/$6.44) per month.

EE added that this is the first in a series of BT benefits to be made available to its customers. It is also the first time that a BT service will be promoted through EE's retail stores.

Marc Allera, the CEO of EE, noted that sport has proved to be a particularly popular service for mobile users and said the European Championship football tournament had caused traffic to peak at previously unseen heights.

"Now, as part of BT Group, we are able to offer customers the chance to watch the very best in live domestic and European sport when out and about. With our ambition to reach 95 per cent of the geography of the UK by 2020, EE customers will be able to watch Premier League football while on Hackney Marshes, or the America's Cup in the middle of Lake Windermere," Allera said.

EE said in April that it pledged to cover 95 per cent of the UK landmass with its 4G network by 2020 in an effort to reduce the number of mobile broadband "not spots" around the country. The announcement was made a week after a report from Which? and OpenSignal revealed that UK mobile users are only able to connect to 4G half of the time.

Inclusive content offers are popular among mobile operators as a method to woo subscribers for their 4G services. For example, Vodafone UK includes a choice of six months' free access to Now TV, Spotify or Sky Sports in pay monthly plans.

In France, SFR also recently acquired media assets from parent company Altice to create a fully converged telecoms and media group along the lines of BT.

For more:
- see this EE release

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