5G Coming to 16 UK Cities

LONDON – UK telecoms provider EE announced that it is bringing super-fast 5G mobile connectivity to 16 UK cities in 2019. The launch will initially take place in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester. It will then be rolled out to Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. While this is undoubtedly good news for UK consumers, ZDNet explains that we should not get too excited yet: “The first 1,500 sites that EE is upgrading to 5G amount to around 7% of its total sites, and cover 15% of the UK population. However, these sites use 25% of all data across the whole network.” Here are some more details on the rollout:
Coverage won’t be total: 5G will be offered in the busiest parts of the six launch cites — including Hyde Park in London, Manchester Arena, Belfast City Airport, the Welsh Assembly, Edinburgh Waverley train station and Birmingham’s Bullring. EE said it will also be offering some 5G services in the busiest parts of ten other UK cities — Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol.