standalone 5g – Mobile News

EE extends 5G+ coverage to 1.6 million more customers

Staff Reporter — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:23:15 +0000

EE has switched on its 5G standalone – branded as 5G+ – connectivity for more than 500,000 existing customers and expanded coverage to a further 1.6 million people it accelerates its next-generation network rollout.

More than 15 per cent of EE’s pay-monthly customers now use 5G+ which is is claimed to offer more reliable performance in busy areas, faster download and upload speeds, and improved capacity video calling, livestreaming and social media. EE aims to reach 99 per cent population coverage by spring 2030.

Customers on eligible pay-monthly handset and SIM-only plans with compatible devices have now been given access to 5G+.

EE has also activated 5G+ in 20 new towns and cities, taking total population coverage to more than 44 million people. This is around 66 per cent of the UK.

The network says ths is five months ahead of its target. The tech now live in major urban centres including Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and London, as well as at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, which attracts around three million visitors each year.

Newly activated locations include Ballymena, Chelmsford, Gateshead, Hartlepool, Hereford, Oldham, Rochdale, Solihull, Stafford, Stevenage, Tamworth and Warwick.

EE is testingnetwork slicing capabilities on its 5G+ infrastructure, with recent trials at events including the Belfast Christmas Market, SailGP in Portsmouth and major football matches at Wembley Stadium.

Vodafone and Three merger vital to ensure 5G Standalone investment which could save transport sector billions

Staff Reporter — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 22:47:24 +0000

The UK will miss out on £11bn of infrastructure investment to deliver 5G Standalone to 95 percent of the population by 2030 and 99 percent of the UK population by 2034 unless the Vodafone Three merger goes ahead.

So says Vodafone UK’s Chief Network Officer, Andrea Donà, citing findings from research that indicate nationwide 5G Standalone will transform road and rail journeys, adding £1 billion to the UK economy annually through improved connectivity for remote workers on trains, while also saving regular road users £2 billion on fuel.

Andrea Donà: 5G Standalone network has the potential to transform connectivity on the UK’s roads and railways.

The modelling, by WPI Strategy, was produced for Vodafone and used survey data on working and connectivity patterns on trains to estimate that there could be up to 28.2 million train journeys every year in the UK where people want to be productive but can’t due to poor connectivity.

These journeys could be transformed into £1 billion in extra productivity for the UK economy, and passengers would save 26 million hours through reduced delays.

SaVing £10 million DELAY COMPENSATION

Vodafone says 5G Standalone can save companies £10 million in delay compensation, which could be reinvested into critical infrastructure. 5G Standalone connected devices could reduce congestion and journey delays for freight drivers, equating to productivity savings of £140 million a year for businesses in the freight transport sector by reducing traffic, making journeys smarter, and improving delivery time efficiency.

5G Standalone connected devices could reduce congestion and journey delays for freight drivers, equating to productivity savings of £140 million

Alongside the modelling, a poll of 2,000 UK adults found that 60 percent of those surveyed say poor mobile connectivity on trains stops them from using journeys productively. 5G SA could improve 660 million train journeys by addressing these issues.

“The national rollout of a 5G Standalone network has the potential to transform connectivity on the UK’s roads and railways. Across road and rail alone, it could unlock £3bn a year for the UK through boosted productivity and fuel cost savings from smoother journeys,” said Donà.

The survey also found that addressing connectivity issues could encourage people to use public transport. Over half of respondents wish they could use public transport more frequently, but cited delays as a major issue. On average, commuters say they lose two hours and 20 minutes per month due to train service disruptions, while 51 percent avoid trains altogether because of marginal time saved by traveling by car.

Non-Standalone 5G which relies on existing 4G networks for certain functions like control signaling. Stand alone 5G uses new infrastructure designed specifically for 5G to unlock the full potential of 5G technology, offering:

Faster Speeds: 5G SA can deliver faster data rates, with lower latency and higher bandwidth, compared to 5G NSA.
Ultra-Low Latency: The standalone architecture can support applications that require real-time responsiveness, such as autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and advanced gaming.
Network Slicing: 5G SA supports network slicing, which allows operators to create virtual networks tailored to specific applications or industries, ensuring optimized performance.
Improved Capacity and Reliability: 5G SA can support a massive number of connected devices more efficiently, crucial for IoT applications like smart cities and remote healthcare.

Ericsson ready and waiting to help operators speed up 5G rollouts

Staff Reporter — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 14:02:26 +0000

The UK has lagged behind some others in rolling out 5G, but Bjorn Odenhammar, Ericsson’s chief technology officer for the UK and Ireland, says there are ways they can use spectrum efficiently to give it a boost

May 2022 marked three years since 5G arrived in the UK, after South Korea became the first country to launch mobile 5G commercially in April 2019.

In the UK, Three says it is currently leading on 5G rollout – reaching more than 400 towns and cities, and covering 54 per cent of the country’s population.

On the vendor front, meanwhile, Ericsson has sought to pave the way by putting itself at the forefront of 5G, highlighting that it was the first company to bring the technology to four continents.

However, the UK is still lagging behind some other countries when it comes to deployment.

Mobile News spoke to Bjorn Odenhammar, chief technology officer for the UK and Ireland at Ericsson, to get more of an insight into how the country is progressing with its 5G rollout.

Scaling Up

Ericsson is involved with all four of the main UK operators on 5G, providing them with radio access technology and helping them scale up their networks across the UK.

Odenhammar says the UK is currently lagging behind the US and South Korea partly because those countries have made huge investments in 5G, with the latter having coverage of around 90 per cent in urban areas.

He adds that there’s also a need in the UK to boost quality of rollouts by stepping up 5G deployment in the mid-band spectrum range between 3.6 and 3.8GHz, which was auctioned out last year.

“Many UK operators have selected to deploy 5G on some of the lower-frequency spectrum bands, but it isn’t giving the same capacity boost,” he says. “We really need to utilise the mid-band spectrum more.”

Odenhammar adds, however, that the combination of that spectrum with lower frequencies will make for a more robust service.

“From a radio perspective, 700MHz is another spectrum band that is key for 5G because this lower band can give you the wide coverage.

“When you have those two spectrums combined, you can really start to benefit from 5G deployment, and now there is nothing stopping UK operators from deploying.”

The UK is still lagging behind with the 5G rollout despite major coverage

Covid Effect

Odenhammar says the country’s slow rollout comes despite the pandemic making the importance of connectivity even clearer.

“We saw traffic patterns change, as during COVID there were less people in central London and more people sitting in their homes in the suburbs,” he says.

Odenhammar believes, meanwhile, that operators can focus more on filling in coverage gaps alongside their initial urban deployments so that other areas are not left behind in the long term.

Ericsson’s ‘Five ways to a better 5G’ report from last year that surveyed people in 26 countries found that indoor coverage is most important for consumers as the technology starts to displace WiFi.

Odenhammar also says there are ways to better reach rural areas. “We are seeing growth in fixed wireless access [FWA], where you use the 5G network to deliver broadband services,” he says.

“With this, we find a good connection in your home and it is a quicker way to connectivity in rural areas, as usually you would need approval to dig up streets to install fibre.”

An Ericsson survey showed that 18 per cent of consumers see FWA services as extremely relevant and 16 per cent of users would give up their current home broadband provider to try a 5G FWA service.

5G Standalone

A robust 5G infrastructure is something that Odenhammar believes can really benefit the UK and that the deployment of 5G-core standalone infrastructure is the next step to a faster rollout.

“We are testing standalone with some UK operators,” Odenhammar revealed. “Standalone has already been launched in the US and China, so the technology is readily available and we are deploying it soon, but it’s more a question of us getting the parts together to deploy it.”

He adds: “I can’t give you an exact date for standalone 5G in the UK due to different operators going at different speeds, but I believe it will be at some point this year or next.”

One of Ericsson’s global offices

Road Ahead

The rollout of 5G started to gather pace in 2020, but came up against a potential stumbling block in July of that year due to the government banning Huawei equipment by the end of 2027.

Ericsson is now a leader in 5G deployment, but Odenhammar says he can’t speculate on whether the Huawei ban has had a significant impact on operator rollouts.

“We have been successful in continuously investing in our product portfolio,” he says.

He isn’t focusing on what other companies are doing with 5G, but instead on the government’s goal for the majority of the UK population to be covered with the technology by 2027.

“We have the supply capabilities, skills and tools to reach this goal,” says Odenhammar.

“It is the operators that need to commit to this goal, but we are ready and willing to work with them to get this rolled out.”

Ericsson: standalone 5G will be a real spur for innovation

Staff Reporter — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 13:00:04 +0000

A decade since Ericsson’s first Mobility Report, we asked how the vendor sees the future for the industry

The emergence of 5G has dominated the technology landscape over the past couple of years and momentum continues to grow.

With many companies predicting what 5G can do for the future, Ericsson has been at the centre of providing projections, trends and data on the mobile industry.

And the Swedish vendor has certainly seen big change in the market in the decade since 2011, when it published its first Mobility Report on the industry.

Since then, some 5.5 billion smartphone users have been added and mobile data traffic has increased 300-fold, according to its latest issue of the report published in November 2021.

As a global leader in 5G, Ericsson meanwhile has 105 live 5G networks across 46 countries.

Mobile News spoke to Ericsson’s Andrea Spaccapietra, VP of digital services for the UK and Ireland, to find out more about the rise in 5G and how it can improve industries.

What are your predictions for 5G in the UK in 2022?

In 2022, the UK telecoms industry will embark on the next phase of its 5G journey – that is, the rollout of standalone (SA) 5G.

Most deployments today consist of a nonstandalone (NSA) deployment model, where existing 4G LTE infrastructure is leveraged to enable 5G connectivity.

However, it is in the SA 5G era, with the ability to efficiently support the most demanding applications in terms of high bandwidth, ultra-low latency and reliability – that we will start to see the most transformative use cases.

Supply chains, manufacturing and healthcare are just a few of the industries that we will start to see leverage SA 5G this year.

With supply chains particularly stretched and ripe for innovation, we’ll see pioneering use cases emerge in which millions of sensors and IoT devices track products from source to final destination.

The UK is in a prime position to lead on the deployment of SA 5G. Three of the country’s leading operators – EE, Telefonica and Vodafone – have selected Ericsson to deploy 5G-core-standalone infrastructure across the country.

What’s the roadmap for the rollout of standalone 5G?

The UK’s legislative agenda has set the stage for easier deployment of 5G and is on the right path, having concluded critical spectrum auctions last year, accelerated the Shared Rural Network scheme, supported 5G trials and cut red tape around planning laws.

The ‘quick wins’ of 5G have been captured, with consumer coverage having been extended to most major cities, and consumers want more innovative uses that only SA 5G can deliver.

Meanwhile, the business case for enterprises for SA 5G is being reinforced through various test beds and small-scale deployments.

As a result, we expect the UK’s main network operators to deploy SA 5G in 2022.

This begins with dedicated core and radio-access-network (RAN) infrastructure being connected to standalone architecture, with the network then consolidated on a single platform.

As governments, consumers and corporations see the potential of SA 5G in its early stages, demand will rapidly increase, leading to renewed urgency and even faster deployment.

For the UK to meet demand and recognise the potential of 5G, the government and telecoms industry will have to work together to remove any remaining barriers to swift deployment.

Andrea Spaccapietra on the role of 5G

What innovation will 5G enable?

At the consumer level, 5G is already the fastest mobile generation ever deployed.

Ericsson research predicts strong demand for truly ‘next gen’ 5G services such as AR and VR – just look at the positive reaction to the newly launched ‘Green Planet’ AR experience in London, which Ericsson has supported as a technology partner.

As these enhanced video formats become commonplace, 5G uptake will continue to grow quickly.

For enterprises, as key industries accelerate 5G trials and the technology continues to prove itself, we will see it transition quickly from being experimental to being embedded.

With the deployment of SA 5G and the most transformative capabilities, we expect adoption to accelerate even further.

There are also broader societal factors that will speed up the adoption of 5G, including the need to connect rural areas, the growing focus on sustainability, and the UK’s ‘levelling up’ economic agenda.

When do you expect 5G to overtake 4G?

Ericsson forecasts that 5G will cover about 60 per cent of the world’s population in 2026, becoming the dominant generation in a few short years.

Our latest Ericsson Mobility Report reveals an almost 300-fold increase in mobile data traffic since 2011 – and in the next decade, as we realise the promise of 5G, mobile networks will be more integral than ever to how we interact, live and work.

Which sectors of the economy can really benefit from 5G?

It’s important to emphasise that every single industry and our society at large will benefit from 5G, which will provide the connectivity platform for incredible new innovations.

That said, there are some sectors that will see more immediate returns, with manufacturing being a key example. Research has shown that the full realisation of 5G across manufacturing, construction and agriculture can deliver nearly £15 billion in additional economic growth for the UK.

Recognising this, big players have been developing proof-of-concept trials over the last few years.

For example, we supported the installation of a private 5G network at Ford’s electric vehicle battery workshop, designed to drive efficiency and agility. We expect many manufacturers to move from proof of concept to fuller adoption in 2022, now that the technology has proven itself.

Another industry that we’re excited about is healthcare. As well as powering data analytics and AI algorithms that support predictive treatments, 5G will bring latency low enough to deliver live HD video to a paramedic or enable remote surgery.