Waterloo, Charing Cross, Liverpool Street stations getting 5G
U.K. telecom operator EE has switched on 5G in some of the kingdom’s busiest transport hubs and city center destinations, the telco said in a release.
EE, owned by local telecom group BT, said that people traveling through London Waterloo, Britain’s largest train station, Liverpool Street Station, and Charing Cross can now access 5G services.
London commuters can also access 5G technology at Highbury and Islington station, which sees 29.5 million people a year pass through, New Cross Gate Overground station and Shoreditch High Street Overground station.
The telco also announced the availability of 5G technology in some of the UK’s most popular places including:
- Market Street on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile
- Cardiff’s St David’s shopping centre and Morgan Arcade
- London’s Piccadilly Circus, Clapham Common, and Hampton Court Palace gardens
- Albert Square, in Manchester
- Belfast’s Great Northern Mall and City Hall
- Birmingham’s Victoria Square, the Mailbox and Brindley Place, which hosted 4.5 million visitors last year
Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s consumer division, said: “Our engineers are building new 5G sites every day, and increasing capacity on 4G sites – all part of our ambition to keep all of our customers connected 100% of the time.”
EE is also expanding 5G coverage in the West Midlands, where the telco is rolling out coverage around Solihull, Dudley, Sutton Coldfield, West Bromwich, and Lichfield. Around Greater Manchester, 5G is being brought to areas around Salford, Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne, Rochdale and Milnrow, EE said.
The operator also said it has recently built sites in three new cities – Bristol, Leicester and Coventry. The sites will be switched on next week, EE said.
EE had officially launched commercial 5G services in a number of U.K. cities at the end of May.
The initial cities where the telco already offers 5G services are London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester.
EE will also be introducing 5G across the busiest parts of Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield during the rest of the year. In 2020, Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Brighton, Cambridge, Dundee, Exeter, Ipswich, Norwich, Plymouth and York will receive 5G coverage, EE said.
EE said that the commercial launch is the first phase of the telco’s 5G rollout: a Non-standalone 5G New Radio deployment focused on using the combined power of 4G and 5G technologies. Phase 2, from 2022, will introduce the full 5G core network, enhanced device chipset capabilities, and increased availability of 5G-ready spectrum.
EE said that higher bandwidth and lower latency, coupled with expansive and growing 5G coverage, will enable a more responsive network, enabling immersive mobile augmented reality, real-time health monitoring, and mobile cloud gaming.
A third phase, beginning in 2023, will introduce Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), network slicing and multi-gigabit-per-second speeds. This phase of 5G will enable critical applications like real-time traffic management of fleets of autonomous vehicles and massive sensor networks.
