U.K. telecom EE has switched on its 5G network in 14 cities across the U.K., bringing the total number of cities with 5G coverage through EE’s network to 20.
EE has turned on its 5G networks in Castlereagh, Guildford, Hamilton, Harlow, Hoddesdon, Kimberley, Lisburn, Maidstone, Sydenham, Watford, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Glasgow and Huddersfield. When EE launched its initial service in May of this year, six cities were included in the deployment including London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester.
While many of these cities have limited coverage, EE is boasting its coverage in London is 60.6% of the city, 43.4% in Cardiff and 51.6% in Birmingham. EE claims that 5G testing by RootMetrics in London, Birmingham and Cardiff achieved the highest average download speed and 5G availability.
RootMetrics found that the 5G median download speed for EE’s 5G network in London was 149.2 Mbps compared to Vodafone’s 97.7 Mbps. By comparison, EE’s non-5G mode median download speed was 43.6 Mbps compared to Vodafone’s 33.9 Mbps and O2’s 16.8 Mbps.
This shows that while 5G speeds are considerably faster than non-5G download speeds, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before it reaches the promised 10 times boost in speed, which would be around 1 Gbps and higher.
As new technology comes online, software is improved and new networks are deployed across the various cities and newer smartphones come on the market, speeds will eventually increase. This will likely not only be a boost to EE but to other U.K. telecoms like O2, Vodafone and Three.
