Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

EE Prepare First Live UK Trial of 5G Wireless Broadband in London

Wednesday, Jun 6th, 2018 (12:01 am) - Score 1,731

Mobile operator EE has today announced that it will switch on the “UK’s first” live trial of their new prototype 5G based ultrafast wireless broadband network at 10 sites around London’s Tech City area during October 2018, including five small businesses and five homes. Gigabit speeds are predicted.

Apparently some of the local areas that will see the new service include City Road, Old Street, Hoxton Square and Chiswell Street. Meanwhile EE intends to use their social media channels in order to find the first willing 5G trialists to support their test of the new technology.

The announcement comes shortly after BT’s Group CEO, Gavin Patterson, promised that EE would “lead the market to 5G” by “looking to have a commercial product launched within the next 18 months” (i.e. by the end of 2019). Rival O2 UK recently suggested that this would only be a “lite version of 5G” without key features, although EE has since defended their plan (here).

Advertisement

Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer Business, said:

“This live trial is a big step forward in making the benefits of 5G a reality for our customers, and in making sure that the UK is at the front of the pack for 5G technology. We’re focusing our resource and experience across EE and BT to ensure that we continue to lead the UK market with a mobile network that keeps giving our customers the best speeds and the best coverage. 5G is a fundamental part of our work to build a converged, smart network that keeps our customers connected to the things that matter most.”

Margot James MP, UK Minister for Digital, said:

“We want the UK to be a global leader in 5G as part of our ambition to create a world-leading digital economy that works for everyone. Together with the Government’s own test beds and trials programme, industry initiatives like this will help deliver the benefits of this new revolutionary technology to businesses and consumers across the UK.”

Sadly the press release doesn’t include any solid information about what flavour of 5G and performance we can expect. The official specification for the technology has often highlighted its potential for peak shared capacity speeds of 20Gbps (Gigabits per second), although initial deployments will not get anywhere close to that level (mobile technology usually takes a few years to reach its target performance).

However the fact that EE will target premises, rather than people, confirms that they’re trialling a Fixed Wireless Broadband ISP style connection instead of a solution for the mobile environment, which would be in keeping with other early trials. Part of the reason for that is because you can’t actually buy a 5G capable Smartphone in the shops yet, which may not change until 2019.

We can also confirm that EE will adopt a 3.5GHz (spectrum band) based setup for the trial (not the recently acquired 3.4GHz band), which is the same as they’ve used in lab tests before. Earlier tests in this band have shown that such a setup, when combined with 64×64 MIMO and plenty of spectrum frequency (100MHz), could achieve a wireless broadband speed of 2.8Gbps (and sub-5ms latency) over short distances.

Since this is a live test then we can speculate that a target speed of around 1Gbps might be a more realistic prediction, which is the same sort of performance as you’d get from many Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) providers and it’s unlikely that any of those on the residential side could take full advantage of that. This is all probably going to be based off the 3GPP Release 15 Option 3 standard.

Advertisement

Meanwhile Three UK has said “we will start doing 5G trials in early 2019.”

Tags: , ,
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: First 3 Months Free
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £23.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Sky UK ISP Logo
Sky £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £25.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheap Unlimited Mobile SIMs
Talkmobile UK ISP Logo
Talkmobile £11.95
Contract: 12 Months
Data: 120GB
iD Mobile UK ISP Logo
iD Mobile £16.00
Contract: 24 Months
Data: Unlimited
Smarty UK ISP Logo
Smarty £18.00
Contract: 1 Month
Data: Unlimited
ASDA Mobile UK ISP Logo
ASDA Mobile £19.00
Contract: 24 Months
Data: Unlimited
Three UK ISP Logo
Three £20.00
Contract: 24 Months
Data: Unlimited
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: First 3 Months Free
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £19.00
300Mbps
Gift: None
toob UK ISP Logo
toob £22.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Beebu UK ISP Logo
Beebu £23.00
100 - 160Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon