O2 UK Switch On 5G Standalone Mobile Broadband Network in Oxfordshire
Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today announced that they’ve switched-on their next-generation 5G+ (5G Standalone) mobile broadband network across more of Oxfordshire in England, which is said to reach more than 450,000 residents across 495 towns, villages and hamlets.
Just to recap. O2’s rollout of 5G+ / 5GSA first began in February 2024 (here) and aims to reach “at least 90% outdoor coverage” in every location they cover. The operator’s latest rollout across Oxfordshire includes locations such as Oxford, Banbury, Abingdon, Bicester, Witney, Didcot, Carterton, Kidlington, Henley-on-Thames, Thame, Wantage, and Farringdon.
The new 5G+ network is currently live across around 86% of the UK’s population. The technology offers a pure end-to-end 5G network that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for IoT devices, increased reliability and security etc. By comparison, early 5G networks used a Non-Standalone (NSA) approach, which was hobbled by being partly reliant upon older and slower 4G infrastructure.
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The new network is typically available to O2’s customers with compatible devices “at no extra cost“, although we do wish that mobile operators would start giving geographic coverage figures for their 5G+ network as population figures always sound better than the reality often shows.
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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Mark, do you know if it now shows 5G+ when connected to (5G SA)? For the past few years, whenever I’ve been connected to 5G+, there’s been no way to tell if I’m actually on it unless I use an app called (nPerf).
I’ve seen that iPhones in a few other countries display (5G+), so I was wondering if that’s the case here now in the UK.
Thank you