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1 month ago
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BT wants to have 5G Standalone (5G SA) mobile service available to 99 percent of the local population by the end of the decade, but it isn't the only telco with lofty ambitions.
The former state-owned telecoms monopoly reckons it can reach 99 percent of the population with 5G SA network coverage years ahead of rivals, and is rolling out the tech to make it happen.
Building out 5G SA means upgrading the infrastructure to offer a better quality of service, rather than bolting 5G radios onto existing 4G networks as UK mobile operators previously did in order to get the new standard up and running.
This is one of the reasons why the user experience of Britain's mobile networks has been ranked among the worst in Europe.
BT, or rather its mobile subsidiary, EE, says it aims to achieve its coverage goal by rolling out new gear including Ericsson AIR 3284 5G triple-band FDD massive MIMO radios at base stations, plus an expanding deployment of over 1,500 outdoor small cells around the nation to boost coverage.
The benefits of all this, we're told, are going to be so great that the telco wants everyone to stop calling its cell network 5G and refer to it as something else instead.
"To make the benefits of this technology clearer for customers, we'll use the term 5G+ rather than the technical industry shorthand 5G SA or 5G Standalone. It's the same game-changing network, but in language that's simple and relatable," claims Howard Watson, chief security and networks officer at BT Group.
Extending 5G SA coverage to all populated areas of the country by 2030 was actually a goal set by the previous UK government, but it was unwilling to stump up cash to help fund necessary network upgrades and instead talked of "a range of measures" to support commercial investment.
Fiber network biz CityFibre claims its rate of customer connections is close to doubling every quarter, with 108,000 connected in Q3 2025 compared with 58,000 in Q2.
The alternative network provider says it now has around 730,000 customers, and is picking up additional internet service providers (ISP) such as Sky, which started offering services via CityFibre in July.
CityFibre began selling a 5.5 Gbps wholesale package to ISPs in June, claiming it is more than three times as fast as its chief fixed-line rival, BT Openreach.
At the same time, another Brit telco, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), is also rolling out massive MIMO support, this time using Nokia kit at what it refers to as a first-of-its-kind mobile Giga Site at Paddington in London.
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The "Giga Site" combines low, mid, and high-band spectrum with Nokia's latest dual-band massive MIMO technology, which employs a large number of antennas to improve performance by boosting capacity, spectral efficiency, data rates, and coverage.
This deployment can deliver more than 10 Gbps of throughput, according to VMO2, which says it plans to roll out a thousand of these new sites nationwide throughout next year.
Also key to the operation of the site is newly acquired spectrum from Vodafone UK, which VMO2 acquired as part of the deal to enable the merger of Vodafone and Three to go ahead.
The latter merger was completed in June, making the imaginatively named VodafoneThree into an operation able to compete against the two giants, BT/EE and VMO2. Now, just months later, those rivals are both announcing major upgrades of their networks, which we're sure is just a coincidence. ®
