Vodafone UK Ultrafast 5G available in 6 More UK Cities
Vodafone UK has announced that their new ultrafast 5G data network has now gone live in busy areas around the cities of Belfast, Edinburgh, and Leeds, as well as the towns of Cheadle, Rochdale, and Stockport around Greater Manchester. There’s also an update on 5G roaming and MORAN technology.
In terms of 5G roaming across other countries, Vodafone is still the only UK operator to offer this in parts of Germany, Italy, and Spain at no extra cost. Today, the operator has also added five locations inside the Republic of Ireland to that roaming list (i.e. Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford). Naturally, roaming coverage is limited by the roll-out pace of operators in other countries as well as our own.
Vodafone 5g UK
On top of all that, Vodafone has just become the first UK company to successfully introduce 5G Multi-Operator Radio Access Network (MORAN) technology, which simply enables providers to share the same mobile base station (i.e. helping to reduce energy and the number of masts needed).
Exact details of how the operator will deploy MORAN weren’t given, although no doubt it could have a role to play as part of both their network sharing agreement with O2 and the new £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) scheme (i.e. improving geographic 4G coverage to 95% of the UK by 2025).
Nick Jeffery, Vodafone UK CEO, said: “We have started the new year as we mean to go on. We now offer 5G in double the number of places than our nearest rival and we have significantly boosted the capacity of our network. It is ready for the arrival in 2020 of some great new 5G handsets and the next big software release bringing ultra-low latency. Together, these will push 5G to the next level.”
The mention of “ultra-low” latency is interesting as so far 5G mobile networks have only been able to produce a smaller improvement than expected over 4G, although part of the reason for that is because a lot of early deployments have lacked some of the key features and spectrum bands required.
However, in theory, the 5G network itself (excluding remote servers) should be capable of fast latency down to around 1 ms (milliseconds) in fixed wireless environments and 4 ms in mobile ones.
How fast is 5G?
5G is around 10 times faster than 4G. It’s designed to work at average speeds of 150–200 Mbps, and peak speeds can reach above 1 Mbps. This means you’ll be able to download a full HD film in around 3 minutes (compared to over 15 minutes on 4G).
- Where 5G works at average speeds of 150–200 Mbps, 4G works at average speeds of 23–35 Mbps.
- Where 5G can reach peak speeds higher than 1Gbps by default, basic 4G works at a maximum speed of 150Mbps, while 4G EVO (a later, faster version of 4G) can reach up to 800Mbps depending on device capability and the number of carriers deployed.
5G speeds can vary and depend on multiple factors, such as how far away you are from a mast, which spectrum is being used, and how many people around you are using 5G.
