EE Expand 5G Standalone Mobile to 17 New UK Areas and Deploys ARC Technology
Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has today announced that their latest 5G Standalone (5GSA) mobile network will be going live in a further 17 new towns and cities by the end of 2025. On top of that, customers have been told to expect a “significant boost” to 5G connectivity as they become the “first operator in the world” to deploy Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) tech.
Just to recap. The majority of 5G mobile networks today are still Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they are partly reliant upon older and slower 4G infrastructure. But SA networks are pure end-to-end 5G that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better mobile broadband speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, support for Voice over 5G SA (Vo5G) calling, and increased reliability and security etc.
EE officially began launching a range of new 5G SA supporting mobile plans across 15 major UK cities in September 2024 (here) and they’ve since been expanding their coverage. In fact, the operator’s last major 5GSA coverage update in July 2025 announced that a further 45 locations would start to gain access to the service by the end of August 2025 (here).
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The first of two big new developments today is that EE has announced a list of the next 17 locations to benefit from their 5GSA deployment between now and the end of December 2025, which we’ve listed below. EE has previously informed ISPreview that they only announce 5GSA availability once a location has “at least 95% outdoor coverage“, which helps to ensure a good level of connectivity.
EE’s 17 New 5GSA Locations (Sept to Dec 2025)
1. Basildon
2. Bolton
3. Brighton and Hove
4. Colchester
5. Gloucester
6. Lincoln
7. Maidstone
8. Newcastle-upon-Tyne
9. Northampton
10. Oxford
11. Plymouth
12. Poole
13. Portsmouth
14. Reading
15. Southampton
16. Southend-on-Sea
17. Telford
The other big development today is that EE’s customers in Manchester and Edinburgh have just become the first in the UK to benefit from the operator’s deployment of a “groundbreaking new technology” – Ericsson’s Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) solution. This essentially allows mobile sites in close vicinity to one another to pair up and share capacity (i.e. inter-site 5G downlink carrier aggregation), which can boost network performance without the need to deploy additional radio equipment (especially useful in busy areas at peak times).
Sadly, EE didn’t provide any real-world benchmarks to show the impact on mobile broadband performance, but the operator does claim that combining spare capacity from multiple independent cell sites in this way can increase download (downlink) data performance by around 20% on average (or more than double it “under ideal conditions“).
The technology was initially trialled in Bristol and has now gone live across selected sites in Manchester and Edinburgh, being activated just in time for the latter’s Fringe and International Festivals. The focus is on deploying the technology across busy city centre sites where capacity is most needed, and EE plans to expand the rollout to London, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast, Cardiff, Newcastle, Sheffield and Sunderland “throughout the next year“.
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Greg McCall, Chief Networks Officer at BT Group, said:
“EE customers are the first in the world to benefit from this technology, with millions of them getting a huge boost to the 5G connectivity they rely on every day. By increasing capacity in this way, our customers will get faster speeds and an even more reliable experience instantly. It is a real game-changer and yet another example of how the nation gets a better network experience on EE.
We are building our 5G standalone network at an unprecedented pace to connect customers, communities, and the country to the most reliable and powerful mobile experiences. For those people wanting to get the most out of the newest 5GSA-enabled smartphones, they need the UK’s best 5G network to match and that’s exactly what EE delivers.”
EE clarified that in order to deploy ARC technology they do have to add a small optical pluggable device in each baseband unit to enable the capacity sharing, which then fosters a software-driven approach that allows EE to scale performance efficiently and keeps infrastructure costs low; catering for demand where it’s needed the most. In Edinburgh, for example, sites supporting the city’s Waverley Station have been boosted, while in Manchester it has been deployed in sites across the city centre.
Device compatibility is of course still an issue for 5GSA adoption in general, although such things usually resolve themselves with time as consumers gradually upgrade – many modern Smartphones do now support it on EE’s network. Customers with an EE 5GSA-compatible device will also see the biggest gains from ARC technology, as these phones can tap into multiple 5G frequency bands simultaneously.
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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Wow, Telford is on the list finally!
They announced it today? This story has been published at 12:01 AM. Amazing speed, Mark! 🙂
Can’t say I’m surprised that EE is doing 5G SA here now, they’ve been slowly upgrading lately and finally it looks like my nearest site is being upgraded (getting B1 I think and potentially 5G).
Nobody’s really mapped O2 or Vodafone SA here properly so can’t really expect EE to be mapped properly. At least EE will be more substantial than n1+n78 or n28 on SA (although to be fair I think we might have an O2 n78 SA site since it’s broadcasting 80MHz).
I’m in one of the 5G stand alone areas with a supported device & plan, still have to use WiFi calling as unable to get any usable EE signal inside the building.
LOL, sounds about right, This new tech, the 5G that was supposed to be better than all that came before it and yet, people are struggling to get it inside buildings or if they go between buildings. But what does it matter, at least it is all faster.
Um, not much good if it is not possibl;e to get a signal.
5G is useless
5G done right, i.e. high capacity band n78 on a tall structure fed by 10Gbps backhaul, can be extremely good. I used it as my main home broadband for more than 3 years including most of Covid due to my FTTC cabinet being out of capacity. And that was with an indoor router.
I only switched away because an altnet and nexfibre became available, quickly followed by Openreach protecting their market share.
Unfortunately, too many people in the UK still only experience the budget version of 5G where a small slice of low frequency band n28 covers a large area to make the 5G coverage map look good. Or band n78 from a monopole that barely clears the trees or rooftops, because the council rejected anything taller in case it spoils the view of a nearby retail park.
“5G done right, i.e. high capacity band n78 on a tall structure fed by 10Gbps backhaul, can be extremely good. I used it as my main home broadband for more than 3 years including most of Covid due to my FTTC cabinet being out of capacity. And that was with an indoor router.”
So if the network operators spend a colossal amount of money and if no one signs up to the service, it can work well. It’d work rather less well if the entire neighbourhood was trying to get online at the same time. You might not have had a choice at the time, but you probably wish you did.
This is why, now that the VF3 merger has occured, all of the mobile network operators own / are owned by fixed line ISPs and push it hard. FTTC and FTTP are just better at this, that’s where the majority of the investment has gone, and very rightly so. There’s the added bonus that the FTTP networks make an ideal springboard for 5G small cell rollouts as well.
@CJ, the council rejects tall masts as they look awful and stick out like a sore thumb in some places. I know someone who use 4G for their home broadband, but the antenna they use is outside, 5G is useless where they are. Not much better here either by all accounts, not that my phone have 5G.
I can understand having 5G for home broadband, faster than 4G and not everyone can get decent fixed line broadband, but I still don’t see the point in it on a phone. Do people really need high speed on their phones?
I can’t see this stand alone 5G happening here for a few years, the population is too small.
Oh well, makes little odds to me, my phone as I said don’t have 5G and if you have to have a specific phone for this stand-alone thing, then what is the point?
Not really looked into it to be honest, mainly because i don’t have 5G phone,
5G on a phone is incredibly useful for Broadcasters, particularly those that do News coverage. It saves massively on uplink trucks and other expensive links. They’ll also be plenty of other uses in business commerce. For the average public though 4G if its working well, which for most operators and cells it is congested, usually would be enough. The lower latency of 5G SA is better though for real time applications, for example, like navigation mapping, where online maps and other data are used.
Fanny congratulates BT for their mobile network, compared to the others. Hopefully Kent will get more coverage, as there is more to Kent than always Maidstone getting stuff, where the regions council offices are head quartered.
Funny how EE leading mobile, whist BT landline division still peddles legacy GPON for FTTP 😉 (had to get that in)
What an earth is up with EE? There is NOTHING AT ALL in Swindon ref 5GSA, a town with a population of over 185000 and next to nothing inthecwhole of Wiltshire a county with almost 520000 inhabitants. AFAIK we don’t pay less than inhabitants in Bath for example which in comparison to Swindon is about half the population at c 94000. Time Swindon got the EE network it deserves !
have you confirmed it’s not available – as in, you have a suitable phone & plan and can see what it is saying?
I’ve never placed much stock in EE’s list as I’ve seen 5GSA in places that aren’t anywhere near those listed.
I wish EE would expand their device compatibility to include the Pixel 8 series (and Pixel 9a, which shares the same modem)
Exactly this.
It seems rediculous that there are so many up to date phones out there that support SA but even according to EE’s own website they don’t support them.
What could be causing this?
They were due to upgrade the base station in my area but when they went up to it, they discovered the bolts that secure it to the building it sits on were loose and took foem the entire base station. Now anywhere within 500m of the town centre have zero signal with EE and 3. Nobody can say if or when it’ll be fixed. They’re on about “boosting” other base stations to provide infill coverage, but i doubt it will help because if it was that simple, they wouldn’t have put a base station there in the first place.. Thousands in Skelmersdale impacted.
I live in St Neots and EE is coverage like all MMOs is poor
Did you see the business insider video on 5G?
I dont think my area will be getting any SA 5G. Even NSA 5G here is very strange, outdoors get a couple of bars 5G even though the pole is like 800 metres away. Indoors zero 5G from the same monopole.
On a side note, does anyone know why 5G poles in the USA are in a brutalist design? I dont understand why UK citizens moan about the monopoles lol UK ones are slim compared to the thick brutalist ones in the USA USA USA lol they look like something from a dystopian movie.