The news follows EE's earlier commitment to add hundreds of new sites to the 200 announced just over 12 months ago.
“As demand for data continues to rise, small cells are becoming an increasingly integral part of our mobile network," said James Hope, director of mobile radio access networks at EE.
"Our partnership with Nokia ensures customers continue to benefit from our fastest 4G speeds even at the busiest times and in the most congested of locations, and we’re proud to pass another milestone in this project as we continue to invest in improving the UK’s best mobile network* up and down the country.”
Specifically, an additional 411 small cell installations are now delivering enhanced capacity in high demand areas, including in major cities such as Birmingham, Brighton and Sheffield.
Other new locations to benefit from EE’s ongoing small cells deployment include the cities of Swansea, Leicester, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Southampton and York. At the same time, a number of seasonal hotspots have also received a connectivity boost in time for the Summer, including Newquay, Paignton, Salcombe, Southend-on-Sea and Clacton-on-Sea.
“Nokia has an extensive portfolio of high-capacity outdoor and indoor small cells that deliver premium 4G and 5G network performance in dense urban and in-building environments," added Mark Atkinson, SVP of radio access networks PLM at Nokia.
"This latest deployment will ensure that EE’s customers benefit from seamless connectivity particularly in congested or high-demand areas at multiple cities across the UK. We are delighted to continue our partnership with EE and support their ambition to deliver the country’s best network.”
Small cells take leverage existing street assets, such as BT’s red telephone boxes, to help enhance street-level mobile coverage in busy areas where it’s impractical to build larger sites, such as city-centres and transport hubs. EE has installed approximately 60 small cells on BT’s new digital Street Hubs.
EE’s 611 small cell sites currently carry 20Tb of data traffic every day which is the equivalent of streaming 8,000 hours of HD video or 280,000 hours of music.
Working alongside Nokia, EE deploys a 4G small cell solutions which combine its licenced 1800MHz and 2600Mhz spectrum with unlicenced 5GHz spectrum.
EE is also trialling the extension of small cells to accommodate its 5G network, with Nokia’s AirScale portfolio able to seamlessly upgrade to 5G.
