Britain to launch high-speed 4G network

The country's first 4G network will be launched in London and nine other cities.

The 4G system allows smartphones, tablets and laptops to surf the web five times faster than the current 3G network.

Users will also have to fork out hundreds of pounds for a smartphone that can use the system, such as Apple's iPhone 5 or Nokia's Lumia 920.

But the technology is so powerful that it burns through smartphone battery life, meaning handsets need to be recharged more often.

Customers who upgrade to 4G packages will pay anything from 36 to 56 pounds a month based on the amount of data downloads they sign up for, according to the Mail.

This is some five pounds a month more than what they would have paid under their existing deals for a similar package.

The 4G technology makes it possible to squeeze more data into a smaller slice of the airwaves, which makes it cheaper to transmit vast amounts of information compared with 3G. Consequently, 4G actually costs less to run on a day-to-day basis.