Vodafone has joined the 5G battle and has become the second provider in the UK to offer the ultra-fast mobile internet to its customers.
Rival EE pipped it to the post in the race to become the first 5G mobile provider in the country last month but it is now live in seven British cities.
It is being launched today in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and London.
A range of 12 towns and cities across the UK will be added later in the year – including Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Guildford, Newbury, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington and Wolverhampton.
Specialist 5G SIMs and handsets are required to access the network. Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, One Plus and LG have either already released, or will be releasing various handsets.
Formula One star and British racing hero Lewis Hamilton turned the network on around the UK at a special event in London today.
Vodafone has joined the 5G battle and has become the second provider in the UK to offer the ultra-fast mobile internet to its customers. It is being launched today in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and London
It was announced at the Sky Garden in London with a stunt involving professional rugby players.
In a ‘world-first’ for the technology it transmitted a rugby tackle over 5G, using haptic feedback.
Wasps star Juan De Jongh buckled under the impact of a tackle made 100 miles away from Coventry’s Ricoh Stadium by his team mate Will Rowlands.
De Jongh, who was wearing a full-body Teslasuit which simulated the impact of the tackle, said: ‘I’ve never experienced anything like this. It felt like something from the Matrix.
‘This technology could not only help athletes to train, but to get back into training after injury.’
Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, One Plus and LG have either already released, or will be releasing, 5G devices.
Vodafone may have been the first to announce an official date, but EE has undercut this by more than a month.
It is also offering 5G roaming in Germany, Italy and Spain over the summer.
It will launch initially in seven cities, compared to EE’s six, with just London, Cardiff and Manchester hosting both networks.
Vodafone will also be in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool.
It was announced at the Sky Garden in London with a stunt involving professional rugby players. In a ‘world-first’ for the technology it transmitted a rugby tackle over 5G, using haptic feedback (pictured)
EE has today rolled-out 5G to six cities across the UK – London, Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester (pictured, green). A further ten will be added before the end of 2019 and myriad more before the end of next year, EE claims
Myriad other smaller cities will then get 5G throughout the year, including Stoke, Blackpool and Portsmouth.
O2 is also working on its 5G capabilities but appears to be lagging behind the other two in terms of established infrastructure and clear plans.
It said in February it will launch 5G in the UK at some point this year. It has yet to elaborate on this.
It also intends to start in just four places, earmarking the capital cities of the UK nations -Belfast, London, Cardiff and Edinburgh.
WHAT IS 5G AND WHAT DOES IT DO?
The evolution of the G system started in 1980 with the invention of the mobile phone which allowed for analogue data to be transmitted via phone calls.
Digital came into play in 1991 with 2G and SMS and MMS capabilities were launched.
Since then, the capabilities and carrying capacity for the mobile network has increased massively.
More data can be transferred from one point to another via the mobile network quicker than ever.
5G is expected to be launched in 2020 and will be up to 1,000 times faster than the currently used 4G.
Whilst the jump from 3G to 4G was most beneficial for mobile browsing and working, the step to 5G will be so fast they become almost real-time.
That means mobile operations will be just as fast as office-based internet connections.
Potential uses for 5g include:
- Simultaneous translation of several languages in a party conference call
- Self-driving cars can stream movies, music and navigation information from the cloud
- A full length 8GB film can be downloaded in six seconds.
5G is expected to be so quick and efficient it is possible it could start the end of wired connections.
By the end of 2020, industry estimates claim 50 billion devices will be connected to 5G.
The evolution of from 1G to 5G. The predicted speed of 5G is more than 1Gbps – 1,000 times greater than the existing speed of 4G and could be implemented in laptops of the future