O2 celebrated the first anniversary of its 4G launch by churning out some chunky usage numbers for a service that has a somewhat lower profile than those of rivals EE and Vodafone.

Although O2 has not revealed its 4G subscribers numbers, they are obviously significantly smaller for than the rest of its base.  Yet, almost 20 per cent of all mobile data used by its subscribers is now on 4G.

What the operator did say about uptake was that 4G’s is twice that of 3G in its first year.

Its users enjoy using 4G for video applications: O2 carried the equivalent of eight million hours of HD video during the first 12 months, it said.

Consumers have been watching more video with 4G, as well as playing more games and streaming other media, said O2. Likewise businesses have taken advantage of the extra bandwidth to create mobile hotspots hosting multiple devices.

4G market leader EE, unsurprisingly, has also pointed to higher video take-up in its own usage surveys..

O2 has so far launched 4G in over 240 towns and cities across the UK. Interestingly that seems to bear comparison with EE which this week said its network covered “263 major towns and cities and 2,500 villages and small towns…”, although there could be differing definitions of ‘town’ and ‘small town’ being used.

That looks to be the case because EE, which has made much of its geographic coverage, now claims three-quarters of UK population coverage. By comparison O2 can only put forward a figure of “over 45 per cent”, leaving it somewhat lagging its larger rival.