EE has confirmed plans to launch 5G services in 16 cities across the UK in 2019. The initial launch cities will be London, Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester. It will launch 5G with multiple smartphone partners, plus an EE 5G Home router with external broadband to show the power of 5G for broadband.
EE will launch 5G in the busiest parts of these six cities, including Hyde Park in London, Belfast City Airport, the Manchester Arena, Edinburgh Waverly train station, the Welsh Assembly and Birmingham's Bullring. Throughout 2019, the mobile operator will roll out 5G services across the busiest parts of 10 more UK cities - Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, Nottingham, Hull, Sheffield, Bristol, Coventry and Leicester.
The first 1,500 sites being upgraded to 5G in 2019 carry 25 percent of all data across the EE network, but only cover 15 percent of the UK population. The 5G roll-out strategy is determined by the number of business and consumer customers connected by the EE network in busy areas, plus the amount of data used by these customers. At each 5G site, transmission is being upgraded to 10Gbps links, with these links tested at 5G trial sites in Canary Wharf and East London.
