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Where Can You ACTUALLY Get 5G In The UK? A Comprehensive List…
A quick and handy list of all the places 5G is currently available in the UK – we’ll add more as they go live!
5G is now active in the UK, but it’s not yet available everywhere. EE, the UK’s largest phone network, currently has the biggest reach when it comes to 5G and, as you can see below, EE’s 5G coverage has grown massively inside the last couple of months.
Below, you’ll find an updated list, of all the towns and cities in the UK where you can get 5G data right now.
UK Cities With 5G Coverage
- London
- Edinburgh
- Birmingham
- Belfast
- Manchester
- Cardiff
- Bath
- Bristol
- Chelmsford
- Coventry
- Leicester
- Liverpool
- Glasgow
- Hull
- Leeds
- Lichfield
- Lisburn
- Newcastle
- Nottingham
- Salford
- Sheffield
- Sunderland
- Wakefield
- Wolverhampton
UK Towns With 5G Coverage
- Ashton-under-Lyne
- Birkenhead
- Bury
- Bransholme
- Castlereagh
- Chatham
- Cheshunt
- Clevedon
- Clifton (Notts)
- Clydebank
- Dartford
- Dinnington
- Dudley
- Grays
- Gillingham
- Guildford
- Hamilton
- Hoddesdon
- Harlow
- Huddersfield
- Kimberley
- Kingston-upon-Thames
- Loughborough
- Loughton
- Maidstone
- Milnrow
- Motherwell
- Northampton
- North Shields
- Oldham
- Potters Bar
- Rochdale
- Rochester
- Romford
- Rotherham
- Rugeley (West Midlands)
- Solihull
- South Shields
- Staines-upon-Thames
- Stevenage
- Sutton Coldfield
- Swadlincote
- Sydenham
- Walsall
- Waltham Cross
- Watford
- West Bromwich
Is 5G Worth It?
Right now, in the UK, as well as the USA, there are plenty of obstacles that need to be overcome before 5G lives up to its lofty potential. Because of the nature of how 5G is delivered in the UK, indoor performance is not great. And you need to be near a mast or cell tower to actually get it, unlike 4G and 3G.
You’ll also need a 5G phone, and they aren’t cheap. This will change as we progress through 2020, however, as 5G and other, newer standards like 5G UC become more common. In 2019/early 2020, you had to be a pretty hefty premium for 5G connectivity – and you most likely wouldn’t even get a connection, anyways – but as 2020 rolls into 2021 more and more affordable 5G phone options will become available.
Apple’s iPhone 12 range – coming later on this year – will pack 5G modems for the first time. And so too with the Samsung Galaxy Note 20, which should hit the market sometime in August 2020. You also have 5G options from OnePlus that are now available and Samsung in the form of the Samsung Galaxy S20 range.
Plus, if you buy a 5G phone now it’ll be future-proofed, meaning, once 5G becomes the de facto mobile data standard in the UK within the next year or so, your phone will be fully ready to take advantage of it – this means you won’t have to upgrade as often.
If you’re using a 4G phone, you’ll still get 4G data, obviously, but your handset will not be able to access 5G data – it doesn’t have the right modem. This issue is most pressing for iPhone users; currently, no iPhone models on market support 5G, so ALL iPhone users wanting to access 5G in the near future will need to upgrade to the iPhone 12 when it launches later on 2020.
From here on out, however, the vast majority of flagship Android phones released will feature 5G as standard. This is thanks to Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 865 CPU, which comes complete with an integrated 5G modem. If you’re going with a cheaper Android phone, like the Google Pixel 4a, for instance, you might miss out on 5G connectivity because the phone will use lower-spec CPUs that do not have 5G connectivity built into them.
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