EE promises to double 4G speeds in 10 UK cities by the summer

EE has announced it is doubling the speed of its 4G network, promising average download speeds will rise from 10Mbps to 20Mbps by summer.

The company also stated it is doubling the capacity of its network to accommodate the increased load the speed increase is likely to place on its infrastructure.

Although 20Mbps is promised as an average speed, the theoretical maximum download speeds resulting from the upgrade is 80Mbps. This would allow a 4G downloader to pull data from the internet at roughly 10MB/s -- roughly one five-minute iTunes song a second.

There will be no additional charge to subscribers of the network, and speed increases will be available automatically.

However, only ten of EE's 4G-covered UK cities will initially get this speed boost -- Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield -- leaving the 70 other locations the network aims to cover by the same time on the older speeds.

Wired.co.uk contacted EE to find out whether these remaining cities will be upgraded at a later date, to which the company responded, "it'll be deployed across the 4G network to cover 98 percent of the UK population by the end of 2014", although it couldn't provide any firm dates.

Competitors to EE such as Three already offer speeds close to 20Mbps in many parts of the UK. In less built-up areas of Britain, Wired.co.uk has seen download speeds hit 18-20Mbps on a good day, although the average is significantly lower particularly within cities.

All other major UK networks are expected to have 4G offerings in place later in 2013.

In a statement, EE also outlined that it forecasts mobile data usage to increase "as much as" 750 percent over the next three years.