O2 Name First UK Cities to Benefit from 5G Mobile Rollout in 2019

Mobile operator O2 (Telefonica), which is currently home to a UK customer base of 32.6 million, has today announced that they will commence the roll-out of their next generation ultrafast 5G (mobile broadband) network during 2019. The first cities to benefit will be Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London.

At present the details are wafer thin, although it’s already known that they’ve been busy testing some aspects of a 5G network in London with Nokia (here) and recently extended their existing network sharing deal with Vodafone to include 5G connectivity (here). Like the other operator’s they also bagged a slice of the 5G friendly 3.4GHz spectrum band from Ofcom last year and are hoping to secure more in future auctions.

Despite this it’s worth pointing out that O2 has previously criticised EE for planning to start their roll-out in 2019. “Any UK operator launching ‘5G’ before 2020 would be using a ‘lite version’ of 5G … effectively this means that a 5G launch before 2020 will lack certain capabilities (e.g. super low latency, vehicle communications for autonomous driving, enhanced security),” said a spokesperson for the operator last year (here).

Since then Three UK and Vodafone have also signalled their desire to get the commercial roll-out started in 2019, even if only to a very limited scale.

Mark Evans, CEO of O2 UK, said:

“5G is a promise of so much more – for consumers, business, industry and public services. O2 is working in partnership with British industry, encouraging businesses, big and small, to engage with the possibilities of 5G technology through both our testbed programme and launch deployment.”

O2’s 5G network will arrive this year and we want the next-generation of mobile services to launch with a bang. 5G will benefit customers from launch, with better speeds and improved customer experience. Following the demand from our FTSE 100 trials, we are extending our testbed opportunities so that businesses of all sizes can work us to build the 5G Economy. Mobile is one of the UK’s most powerful opportunities to strengthen our economy and improve the lives of British people and 5G is a significant milestone for this nation.”

Naturally no 5G announcement today would be complete without a glossy promotional video.