London calling: 5G coverage in British capital grew during second half of last year with fastest speeds on Vodafone

The second half of 2020 brought improved 5G availability in the UK with London seeing some of the biggest gains, according to research by RootMetrics. Predictably, the network with the highest 5G availability was EE, which had next-gen connectivity present during 39.9 per cent of RootMetrics' tests in the capital, compared to …

[Danny 2]

You can say it

cheap beer, affordable housing, whippets, and pit ponies..(Your correspondant is a northener)

Northern French correspondent?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would throw us off our 1,200 baud modem.

The report is interesting, I'm tempted to upgrade to 4G.

[MrMerrymaker]

Re: You can say it

4G is good, really a noticeable upgrade from 3G.

5G not so much.

And that's before you take into account the higher prices, the limited coverage, and the teensy little fact we're basically stuck at home for months still...

[JetSetJim]

Re: You can say it

5G can make a noticeable difference to someone stuck at home who, up until then, was stuck on the end of a piece of wet string provided by Openreach. It's not all about data while on the move

[stevebp]

Re: You can say it

You can bet your life that if your property is so remote that Openreach has yet to reach it with FTTC, then your opportunity to capitalise on a 5G rollout is slim to none - 5G will only ever be available in specific high-volume areas for the foreseeable future and maybe forever. Don't worry - one day you might get 4G

[JetSetJim]

Re: You can say it

FTTC still doesn't provide that great a provision to a large number of properties. There are still areas of towns that can only achieve 2-10mbps via BTO (SN8 4AX, as an example, offers a "stay fast" guarantee of 3mbps in a town with ~8,000 population)

A previous address of mine, just checked, can now achieve the giddy heights of 28mbps (when I lived there 5 years ago it was 2mbps if you were lucky). It may have been rural, but certainly not remote - it's just that the exchange was in the next village.

The postcode I currently live at, near central Oxford, will only offer me 6mbps guaranteed via BTO. Yeah, very remote. Thankfully I can also get Virgin Media, so can get a halfway decent bitrate that way, and haven't had to resort to trying the city's 5G coverage (which I'm told there is, although 4G may be faster at the moment due to current spectrum allocations)

[JetSetJim]

Re: You can say it

Just checked my exchange, it's not enabled for FTTP/C or G.Fast, so is limited to 15-24Mbps at best, despite being 400m from my house

[Mog_X]

5G should start improving....

once more of the Covid-19 vaccine gets rolled out.

(adding joke icon just in case, but I suspect Reg readers don't fall into that conspiracy group)

[JetSetJim]

Re: 5G should start improving....

I'm sure the vaccine uptake should drive demand for the 5G towers, at least, to Whitehall can properly control us

[Tempest]

What About The Rural Areas?

Whilst London gets a ersatz 5G - bet they aren't using carrier frequencies over 2,500MHz - the Rural areas are neglected.

Many countries enjoy 100% coverage even in the hills and valleys.

[katrinab]

I’ve no doubt some conspiracy theorists will be trying to plot a correlation between 5G availability and coronavirus infection rates. No doubt the same ones that are using guitar amp circuit diagrams as “evidence” of some vaccine conspiracy.