O2 UK Expands 5G Mobile to Tyne & Wear, Surrey and Lincoln
Mobile operator O2, which is working alongside key supplier Ericsson, has today announced that their new ultrafast 5G based mobile broadband network has just been expanded to cover several parts (usually the busiest areas at first) of Tyne & Wear, Surrey and Lincoln.
At present the operator, much like some of their rivals, only has access to a 40MHz slice of the 3.4GHz band, which will make it difficult for them to deliver on 5G’s much hyped gigabit speeds, but further radio spectrum bands are due to be auctioned off by Ofcom at the start of 2021 (the 700MHz and 3.6-3.8GHz radio spectrum bands).
Meanwhile the latest locations to be added to O2’s 5G network coverage include parts of Tyne & Wear (Jarrow, Blaydon, Washington, Tynemouth), Surrey (Chipstead, Staines, Weybridge) and Lincoln.
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The operator also continues to invest around £2m a day to improve their existing 4G network – now available to customers in over 19,200 towns, cities and villages – and bring connectivity to rural communities across Britain as part of the industry-wide £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) commitment.
Brendan O’Reilly, CTO of O2, said:
“We’re excited to be switching on our 5G network across three new areas today, which will unlock the exciting benefits of next generation connectivity for customers and businesses.
At O2, we’re proud to be the UK’s number one mobile network for customers. As we continue our 5G rollout at pace we are investing around £2 million a day in our network to ensure our customers can stay connected to the people they love and businesses can survive and thrive as Britain looks to rebuild following Covid-19.”
In case anyone has forgotten, O2 is also in the process of being merged into cable broadband and TV provider Virgin Media (here), which will almost certainly help to fuel improved data capacity for their 5G network.
O2’s 60 Other UK 5G Locations (Partial Coverage)
Aberdeen, Ashford, Banstead, Basildon, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Chatham, Chesterfield, Coventry, Dartford, Derby, Dundee, Eastbourne, Edinburgh, Esher, Gateshead, Gillingham, Glasgow, Grays, Hemel Hempstead, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Lisburn, Liverpool, London, Lowestoft, Luton, Manchester, Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Newtownabbey, North Shields, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Peterborough, Plymouth, Rainham, Redhill, Rotherham, Sheffield, Slough, South Shields, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunbury, Sunderland, Thundersley, Warrington, Weybridge, Windsor, Worthing and York.
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 Linkedin.
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Bought a 5G handset which arrived yesterday (lovely Asus ROG 3)
Stuck my three 5G sim in.
So much for the amazing 100MHz of contiguous bandwidth three has, the speed was rubbish. Less than 50mbits and I really highly doubt there are tons of 5G users connected to that mast since it’s a small town. My EE 4G sim was faster.
Hi there I’ve been meaning to get the rog phone 3 too. But apparently there’s no plans to be released in the UK 🙁 which site did you use to get yours? Because I’m very weary of so many fake sites with fake pricings..
If u could direct me I’d greatly appreciate it! Also which version of the rog phone 3 did you get?
I got the s20 5g on o2 recently and only 4g is available in my area but its so slow that I’ve defaulted my phone to 3g so its faster.
Three really suffers from limited bandwidth and gaps in cell overlapping cell coverage, in Warrington area in general three performance is very lack luster (primary problem is low amount frequency space compared to ee and Vodafone and main one been lots very little 4g+ deployment (4g+ is CA > Carrier aggregation)
Three works generally quite good when 4g+ is available, very bad if your stuck on 4g800
(to Much text below :).)
as three doesn’t support active data cell migration upgrade to 4g1800-2100 if the data is currently active in the last 5-10 seconds, so I was having to actively micro manage my phone when I moved to an area with low signal I had to stop using data so it would switch back to 1800-2100 and use 4g+ (Vodafone and O2 do, I believe ee gets stuck as well as 3 but EE have so much bandwidth space available on any 4g frequency so I don’t normally notice when it’s going slow) one thing thing do I noticed vodafone has very aggressive preference of wanting to use 4g+ and the development of 4g+ is far more then ee and 3 and tend to see +50-100mbs speeds on Vodafone (ee very specific locations I only get high speeds of 100-300mbs on 4g+)
(Vodafone and O2 support migration of active data from 3g to 4g and 4g+ even if your say streaming video or audio)
Bare in mind some phones show 5G when they’re only using 4G data due to how the technology works and an annoying bit of the standard.
My local Three 100mhz 5G mast pulls a lovely 800mbps while their 40mhz deployment by me is doing 200-300.
Though you can really tell when it’s using 4G.
Thank you for the article. I’m currently looking to upgrade my phone and have noted the differing specs with regards to 5g between the UK and the US.
Samsung, One+ and Apple all seem to offer mmwave in the States, but just the sub-6g bands in the UK. The article confirms that Ofcom will be auctioning off the 3.6-3.8ghz spectrum in early 2021, my question is – what do you see the trajectory of 5g being in the UK?
Would it be better to future proof and get a phone which is mmwave compatible? Or is that a long way off in the UK/unlikely to even happen, noting the issues with signal range and potentially prohibitive costs to install the number of antennas required for it to be viable.