Vodafone UK Open Trial 5G Standalone Network to Customers
Mobile operator Vodafone has confirmed that the first “trial” customers are now able to connect to one of the UK’s first deployments of an ultrafast cloud-based 5G Standalone (SA) network, which has been built across parts of several cities including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, Glasgow and Birmingham.
At present, existing 5G deployments in the UK tend to use Non-Standalone (NSA) hardware and systems, which can still deliver impressive mobile broadband download speeds, but they’re often hobbled by some dependence upon existing 4G services.
The way to solve this is by moving toward a pure end-to-end 5G network (SA), which will also deliver improvements such as ultra-low latency times (fast), better upload speeds, network slicing capabilities, better support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, increased reliability and security.
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Regular readers may recall that the operator first started testing a smaller (and more limited) pilot 5G SA network in London, Manchester and Cardiff during mid-2021 (here), but that was not intended for customers and this has now been extended into a much wider field-trial. Selected customers are now being invited to take part in the trial across London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, Glasgow, and Birmingham.
The trial itself is currently still a limited, controlled experience, which enables Vodafone to test and demonstrate the full potential of 5G. Triallists must have either a Samsung Galaxy S21/S22 or OPPO Find X3/X5 Pro smartphone in order to be accepted.
Vodafone Statement
The roll-out is a significant financial commitment for the telecoms industry, and we cannot do it alone. We need support from the Government and regulators.
This could take the form of providing low-interest loans; reforming regulation around net neutrality; encouraging public procurement of 5G services; or reducing barriers to roll-out. Industry consolidation also has an important role to play in providing the scale necessary to invest.
The new network is being supported by systems and services from Ericsson, including a new 5G core network. But deploying 5G SA across the UK will be a much slower and more expensive process, since it requires them to upgrade equipment at each of their mast sites. Part of the trial involves not just testing the network and its capabilities, but figuring out how to deploy the new technology in a commercially viable way.
We should point out that Virgin Media O2 and EE are also preparing for 5G SA upgrades with their own trials, although at present Vodafone seems to be leading the pack a bit with both OpenRAN and 5G SA. As for Three UK, they haven’t really said much about 5G SA and don’t at present appear to be prioritising it as much as their rivals. Three does have a lead right now in 5G speeds and they’ve got good coverage, but that could be eroded if they allow rivals to get ahead with 5G SA.
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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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“The roll-out is a significant financial commitment for the telecoms industry, and we cannot do it alone. We need support from the Government and regulators. This could take the form of providing low-interest loans…”
No you don’t. You’re a commercial business, selling telephony services for profit. If you can’t make enough profit from 5G to allow you to raise sufficient capital on the markets, then don’t do it. Nobody forced you to bid in the spectrum auctions.
Can’t blame them for trying 🙂
Yep, it is about time the government stopped payouts to private companies, like they have to open reach over the years, with scrapping money of the TVlicence, not that bothers me as I don’t pay for a TV licence but still, why should Out of reach have it.
I still don’t get it, What is the need for super-duper speed on a mobile phone? I can kind of understand 5G for home use if people have naff fixed cable broadband, but Fibre should sort that out for most people and maybe to a certain extent to a laptop, but since most places have Wi-fi that can be connected to. People are not going to download large files to their phone, and 4G is more than enough for streaming on a Didi little screen.
5G is about making money by telling people they need the extra speed when they don’t, and people suck it up.
My phone don’t have 5G, I can’t get 5G anyway and to be honest I am not bothered about getting it, when this phone goes belly up I am not going to pay extra for a 5G phone.
Don’t start again Adrian……
Because 5g is only used for a mobile…. /s
There’s a myriad of reasons to push forward on mobile networks. Again because YOU don’t have the use case you’re over here being negative, as usual. If everyone had that attitude there would never be any progress. “What do you want or need that for? this is perfectly fine!”
I don’t get how you can spend so much time here and have the view of:
1) this does everything I need and therefore no one needs anything else
2) Why invest? it’s pointless because of (1)
3) Man, Openreach such, why didn’t they invest (contradicting 2)
There are two separate answers to “why 5G?”. The first is the consumer facing answer, which is the one the operators shout about: higher speeds, lower latency, more consistent latency, resulting in a better experience if you’re using data on your phone and if you tether your phone to let you work while commuting (e.g. on a coach or train).
The second is the operational side; networks are not going to shout about this, because it’s uninteresting to anyone who doesn’t either work for a network operator or already know about it. A significant chunk of the changes between 4G LTE and 5G NR make it simpler (thus cheaper) to run a network with a given quality of service using 5G NR SA than it is using 4G LTE – and it’s also easier to offer your customers a guaranteed quality of service (network slicing, for example) with 5G NR SA than with 4G LTE.
On top of that, 5G NR is designed to cope better than 4G LTE with users congregating in one place (say London Waterloo station) – more idle users per MHz of RF bandwidth assigned, better at sharing between active users.
That second reason doesn’t get noise from the operators because it’s not an advantage for you – it’s an advantage for them, and it’s one that they’ll only get if people move to 5G. But right now, there’s money to be made charging extra for 5G, so they’ll take that money; later, just as 4G changed from an expensive premium feature to a standard requirement, 5G will do the same, because the networks will want to wind down 4G (just as they’re winding down 3G now).
@Simon Farnsworth, I understand what you are saying, but I feel we are being forced fed stuff that many people don’t require, but they think they do because they are told they do.
I have seen it over the years, people going into PC world and being sold the top-notch computer costing hundreds when all they are doing is browsing the web and doing maybe some office stuff, and yet the bloke in PC world say they need it so they must. I know some people will say it is future proofing, but not with computers as they used to go out of date more or less when you got them out of the store. A bit different these days. A five year old machione is more than capable of a lot of work
Mobile phones seem to be the same with mopbile phone suppliers trying to get people to have the fastest phones out there and yet many people don’t need them. My little Oppo have been reliable and works well and cost just over a £100,
5G is more for the benefit of the operator not us, the same with Fibre unless you really need the higher speed, just to save the operator money, and yet we as consumers don’t see any benefit in them saving money.
Smarty who I use give 5G for the same price of 4G i think, I remember then saying my package now allows me to use 5G, not that i can as we don’t have 5G and my phone is not 5G and i have no interest in updating and going by problems other people have with 5G i think I will stick with 4G, it seems to be more reliable.
For home use where people can’t get a decent fixed line broadband then I can 5G being useful, just not sure about the use for mobile,
Don’t think of it as superfast speed for one user, think of it as an overall increase in the amount of bandwidth available. What that means is faster speeds at peak hours, more people being able to use it for home internet if they have no other options, and lower prices for data.
So yes, gigabit on your phone is stupid. But right now with 4G in London, you may be getting 1-2 mbps at peak hours in certain locations, 5G will bump that up to 20. And if unlimited data plans weren’t already super cheap, they’ll get even cheaper. Heck, in 10 years there may not be such a thing as a limited data plan, they’ll all be unlimited, even roaming may eventually be unlimited as standard. That’s what a crapload of bandwidth gets you.
The thing is that your exact same arguments were made back in 2004 about moving from 2G to 3G, and again more recently moving from 3G to 4G.
Yes, the early adopters are always going to feel the pain of being early adopters. And no, you don’t need the latest and greatest if you’re a light user. But in the long run, the new technology is an improvement on the old, and will become the standard as a result.
Just because your use case doesn’t require 5g, doesn’t mean others don’t have a use for it.
I use two unlimited 5g sim cards. One in my phone, and a second phone that runs my home internet. When I’m at home, both sim cards are automatically bonded together giving me faster and more robust bandwidth.
Using a phone with unlimited data as my router allows me to run a whole host of apps, vpn, security, privacy, and configuration and automation options that just aren’t possible otherwise.
Frame the following on your wall folks:
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO FTTP
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO SELF SCAN SUPERMARKET CHECKOUTS
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO 5G
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO SMART METERS
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO WI-FI 6
ADRIAN SAYS NO TO
@Adrian Says NO, Oh dear, you have it bad, even scared to say your own username.
I don’t say no to FTTP at all, I have even recommended people go for it. I say no for me as I have no need for it.
Selfscan are useful for small bits of shopping, but take jobs, that is why I am against them, Smart meters can be used against people as have now been proved with people being put onto pre-pay without their knowledge and also energy suppliers can change tariff prices very quickly.
Contactless payments I do use, I don’t like the card being contactless which is why I refuse to have one, but I use my phone and my watch to pay contactless, but I prefer to use cash, so another you have got wrong.
5G, I admit I don’t see the reason for it on a phone, but I have said I see where it can be useful.
Not sure where you have this thing I say no to Wi-Fi 6, considering I was going to buy a router with Wi-Fi 6, I just have no use myself for Wi-Fi 6 as I have no devices that use it and the chance of me having a device that does is pretty slim unless it comes the norm on cheaper phones. As I have said before, most of the Wi-fi devices in this house use 2.4ghz, which seems to be more reliable than 5Ghz, at least it can go through walls. Not having Wi-fi 6 myself or much to do with it, I will have to wait and see if the 2.4ghz is still more reliable
@Tom, thanks for that, I kind of understand why it is being done, just get fed up with all the IT is faster stuff as if everyone wants everything to be faster.
It is the same with FTTP, the thing adverts bang at people is the faster part.
@Simon Farnsworth, how do you know I had the same arguments back in 2004? I was more into tech stuff those days, but those days I could not afford new tech, so I had to cope with stuff that was handed down to me, like phones, not computers as I always saved to update my machine
for a test to changed my phone to 3G only a few months ago and it was ok, not great, but we use a lot more bandwidth these days, better quality video and stuff like that, but we are not going to get 8K video on our phones and even 4K on a phone you would not notice the difference on such a small screen, unless you got one of those awful Samsung folding things with a crease in the middle, and then you are not going to notice I doubt.
A lot of the problem with 5G is the same as what is happening in some places with FTTP, more poles/masts stuck in places where people don’t want them, like outside people’s flats and these companies don’t care about the public as long as they make money.
At some point I expect I will get a phone with 5G, only because I will have little choice, like I had little choice to get one of the newer style phones with a ton of lenses on the back, strange screen ratio and a camera stuck in screen. I prefer the style of my old Huawei P10 lite than my newer Oppo, even if the Oppo is a better phone.
I am not against tech, just against the constant pushing we get to use it.
“reforming regulation around net neutrality”
Oh no you don’t! If that is the price we have to pay to get better 5g connectivity they can keep it. I don’t want to pay that higher cost!
Most likely a reference to network slicing, which is something that Ofcom has technically already somewhat proposed to accommodate.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/10/net-neutrality-ofcom-uk-softens-open-internet-safeguards.html
Absolutely phenomenal statement.
“Dear Government, we can’t perform our core business function without your help. Please give us cheap money, or let us make money by charging content providers for priority, or just straight up give us money, or let us build wherever we want. Or at least let us buy Three.”
They do cover all bases!
Not enabling field trial for 5G based WiFi routers and MiFi pucks is a miss (even if they would have to loan out some kit for a trial, since these aren’t common items that consumers can purchase yet–plenty of consumer kit available for 4G, but not 5G outside of a mobile broadband offer from the networks.
Even in areas where there is good fibre broadband, there are always some use cases for 5G high speed broadband, as temporary cover for a pop up event, incident, or fibre has broken/pending provisioning.
Should Doubleagent2022 comments replying to Ad47uk not be removed. I don’t understand why the comments are getting so personal. Are XGS_Is_On comments any better? Why get so nasty because someone else says something you don’t agree with. The original comment wasn’t bad. Just not the same opinion as you.
I work as a Three network engineer, ask me anything. I will try to answer your questions.