Three’s UK 5G mobile broadband coverage reaches 29%

Three UK has announced that their 5G rollout has gone live in over 100 new locations across the country, bringing its overall total to 300 locations with an “outdoor population coverage” of 29%.

The operator aims to have launched its 5G services in 2500 new sites within the next few years.

Three UK initially launched its 5G network within London in August 2019. At the time it was only available through their Three Home Broadband service, but smartphone services became available from February 2020 onwards.

It is worth noting that going live in a particular area is not the same as offering full coverage in the area. It could take many more months for an entire city to be covered by 5G.

Three UK has not yet supplied a comprehensive list of their new 5G locations, however they have revealed that locations such as Denholme, Brimington, and Littlestone-on-Sea are all part of their latest rollout.

Three UK has also recently increased its frequency for 5G. It previously had a total of 140MHz across several radio spectrum bands, and has now added an extra 20MHz of frequency in the 700MHz band.

Three UK also has a contiguous block of 100MHz in the 3.4-3.8GHz band, which is considered to be the ‘sweet spot’ for 5G.

The network operator said that they are “delighted to announce that our continued investment in network technology is paying off for our customers with recognition from Ookla that we are the UK’s Fastest 5G network in Q1-Q2 2021. In addition, we have also been recognised as fastest in Birmingham, Manchester and London.”

Chief Technology Officer at Three UK, David Hennessy, said: “Keeping our customers at the forefront of every decision we make is why we have continued to invest in our network and IT infrastructure. As we all navigate through uncertain times, our commitment to the expansion of our 5G and 4G rollout is vital to delivering better connectivity, every day for every customer and we will continue to do so.”

Three UK also says they’ve been working to reconfigure traffic and routing in order to “improve its service and ease the higher traffic areas.”

The operator has upgraded the configuration of over 2000 sites in the last few months so that customers across parts of Scotland can receive better speeds and latency for their 5G connections.