Monthly Network News - July

[Martin-O2]

Hey everyone, 

To kick off our Network Members board, we wanted to catch you up on all the latest Network News.

Each month, we’ll be sharing the top network stories on our latest trials, technologies, coverage stats and more.

5G News 

Our aim is to announce 5G has launched in a city, once it's reached a high enough threshold of coverage. At that stage coverage won't be complete across the whole area, meaning you won’t get 5G coverage everywhere in a 5G town or city. 

5G speeds will also differ depending on where you are due to different factors, like the type of mast you’re connected to, how many people are using the network in your location, how far away you are from the mast, or buildings and hills obstructing coverage. Because of this, speeds will change in different places.

5G will have limited indoor coverage to begin with. This is because 5G uses high frequency radio waves (spectrum) which don't travel as far. As you move out of range of our 5G spectrum, your device will automatically select the most appropriate technology available instead, like 4G. This means your device may sometimes show the 5G icon, whilst using 4G speeds.

At the moment, the unpredictability of 5G coverage indoors means we do not show indoor 5G coverage on our coverage checker. However, as low frequency spectrum is added and more 5G cells are built, indoor coverage will improve. In the meantime, you will still be able to stay connected using our 4G network inside and out.

You can see where we are live with 5G on our website.

LTE-M for business customers

We recently published a whitepaper on LTE-M for our business customers, which takes a deeper dive into this new technology, including some potential use cases across several industries. You can take a look here:

COVID-19 response 

Voice traffic peaked in week one, where we saw 57% more calls being made. Customers were also spending longer on the phone, with the duration of calls being up to 30%longer than they usually would. To support this extra traffic we doubled the capacity of our voice network.

Read more about our network response to Covid’19 here.

Remember, all of the images we share on this board can be shared with the wider customer community, so feel free to use these as an aid to your network conversations! 

[PhoneChanger]

Hi @Martin-O2 would you be able to advise on what the threshold is to be included in the coverage? for example, O2 list Manchester as having coverage but when you review the coverage map its a small area of Salford Quays / Old Trafford, even the city centre isn't covered.

[Martin-O2]

Thanks a great question @PhoneChanger! I'll feed this back into the network team and see what I can find out for you.