Vodafone UK Deploys Ultrafast 5G Mobile to Gatwick Airport

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has announced that their new 5G network, which is capable of ultrafast mobile broadband speeds, has just been deployed to cover the South Terminal building at Gatwick Airport. The North Terminal is set to follow by early 2020.

Passengers will also be able to use 5G on Vodafone’s network at no additional cost when they touch down in Germany, Italy and Spain, as the operator is currently still the only UK mobile company to launch 5G roaming. As usual the Gatwick deployment is being fuelled by the installation of “hundreds of kilometres of [new] fibre” (these tend to be 10Gbps links but Vodafone doesn’t confirm).

All of this forms part of the operator’s initial rollout plan, which has already made 5G available to busy parts of Cardiff, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Glasgow and the Isles of Scilly. A further 12 cities will be added later in 2019 including Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Guildford, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington, Wolverhampton and Newbury.

At present the new network can only harness a 50MHz slice of the 3.4GHz radio band but more spectrum is expected to be auction off by Ofcom next year, which should help to improve network coverage, capacity and thus data speeds.

John Barton, Gatwick Airport’s CIO, said:

“We are delighted to announce yet another world-class facility at Gatwick with Vodafone’s new 5G network now available in the South Terminal. Passengers using the network will benefit from super fast speeds when surfing the web and downloading files, or even box sets to provide video entertainment during one of the many long haul flights that depart from the airport.

5G also has the potential to unlock a wide range of new capabilities and to reliably connect everything around us to a network many times faster than those it replaces. Many of the 250 companies based on the Gatwick campus can also benefit from this super fast 5G service, including those that rely heavily on mobile applications for their day to day business.”

Vodafone’s 5G tariffs are generally priced the same as 4G and they recently began offering an “unlimited” data option too (albeit with speed caps on all but the most expensive plan). However it’s worth considering that EE, Three UK and O2 will eventually get around to upgrading their own networks at major transport hubs too, so Vodafone won’t be alone for long.

We should point out that technically this isn’t the first UK airport to see 5G because Vodafone originally tested the technology at Manchester airport earlier this year, although that wasn’t a proper 5G mobile deployment as it was used to fuel a WiFi service. As usual you’ll need a 5G capable device in order to benefit from the new network.