O2 UK Complete 4G and 5G Upgrades for 5,700 Postcodes in Manchester
Mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today revealed that they’ve completed a project to upgrade the capacity of their 4G and 5G mobile services across “over” 5,700 postcodes in the city of Manchester (England), which should bring “faster” mobile broadband speeds and greater reliability to the area.
The work, which the operator said began at the “beginning of last year“, forms part of O2’s effort to invest around £700m this year into their mobile network to “ensure it is fit for the future and can keep up with increasing customer demand“. All mobile operators have to conduct similar work. This comes against a backdrop of rising demand, with the amount of mobile data traffic more than doubling over the past 5 years. Not to mention the need to withdraw their old 3G network.
On top of the upgrades in 5,700 postcodes, O2 has also improved mobile connectivity at the city’s Heaton Park. The new site is delivering “faster speeds, greater bandwidth, and solid connectivity” for visitors and the local community, ahead of a summer of events at the venue.
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Dr Robert Joyce, O2’s Director of Mobile Access Engineering, said: “With customers using more data than ever before, the improvements we’ve made at over 5,700 postcodes in Manchester will ensure local people and businesses can access reliable connectivity that is so essential in powering our customers’ digital lifestyles..”
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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Hopefully the upgraded will have increased the speed and give the network boost.
These “5700 postcodes” press releases from O2 are so tedious – upgrade a few masts in an urban area and you can easily affect several hundred postcodes. I wish they’d actually say a little more about where the upgrades are, rather than saying thousands of postcodes to make it sound good
Here come the EE fanboys again!
How’s that indoor coverage?
Great thanks! Always have a signal indoors an fast speeds compared to every-other single network.
Since N28 got enabled in my area it’s working very well indoors with VoNR!
Gigabit…you comment on every article regarding 02, I think you’re overusing a point – it gets tiresome after a bit.
You sound like an 02 fanboy coming to 02’s defence, like a night in shining blue armour.
EE is terrible indoors and everyone but their fanboys paid to post here know it.
There is no VoNR on EE so they can add liars to their list.
@jammie1408 what a load of rubbish. You must be talking about EE HQ. Anywhere else EE is TERRIBLE, even in London!
Worst network indoors!
Sounds like you’re trolling to me tbh, we all know VoNR exists on EE unlike any other UK network at the moment. Just scroll through ISPR’s forums and you’ll find all the evidence you need
O2 are by far the worst in our area plus no 5G at all yet
Can anyone living under one of those postcodes confirm an improvement?
They need to bring 5G to all areas of Greater Manchester and provide remote areas with strong collative coverage.
I have no confidence in this update or that any of the big names in mobile or infrastructure improvements are happening outside the only place in the UK (LONDON) that seems to have people living in on or existing. Why do companies believe they only need to serve the capital do they still misunderstand the whole country is a business that requires infrastructure that works and is fit for purpose.
It’s called sl02 for a very good reason.
There has been a marked improvement in a good handful of areas in Manchester. Sites doing just single or dual 4G bands have in a good few places been replaced with new masts with larger headframes accommodating both O2 and VF in the ‘unwound’network areas. In terms of 5G there’s been a marked expansion in the wound areas since last summer, most of this is still NSA but a start. There is still a lot of work to be done though so I hope they’ve not all downed tools and headed off to another city this year!!
Don’t bother entering Cumbria if you’re on O2, not much signal round the lakes or west Cumbria
They need to continue to ramp up the B8 and n28 expansion. Network works fine around here in the South West when it wants to, but B8 and n28 additions are crucial if they want to keep up (saying that, they’ve added B8 to a site recently which I’ve spotted, n28 to three sites (B8 added on two of those too).