iD Mobile 5G Coverage

Last updated 18th July, 2023

You can get 5G on iD Mobile in parts of at least 588 UK towns and cities at the time of writing. The company uses Three’s infrastructure, so it has 5G coverage in all the same places.

iD Mobile rolled out its 5G network in late April 2021. That’s a while after some other MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators), but it was the first MVNO to offer 5G on Three’s network – though it’s now been joined by Smarty.

Below you’ll find full details of iD Mobile’s 5G coverage, as well as how it compares to the rest of the UK’s 5G networks.

iD Mobile 5G Summary

How does iD Mobile's 5G coverage compare to others?

We keep track of which networks offer 5G coverage across 120 major UK towns and cities, so you can see at a glance how they compare in key locations.

iD Mobile has the same number of locations as Three below:

• O2 has launched 5G in 88 of the 120 locations below. 
• Three has launched 5G in 108 of the 120 locations below. 
• EE has launched 5G in 111 of the 120 locations below. 
• Vodafone has launched 5G in 82 of the 120 locations below. 

That said, those numbers just reflect the locations a network claims to have some 5G coverage in – so there won’t always be much coverage.

Further complicating matters, indoor and outdoor 5G coverage will often differ, so it’s always worth using a network’s official coverage checker to make sure 5G is available exactly where you need it. That said, you can expect 5G coverage to rapidly improve.

Latest locations to get iD Mobile 5G

The latest places to get 5G on iD Mobile (via Three) include: Belfast, Cambridge, Croydon, Inverness, Kilmarnock, Paisley, Salisbury, Stockport and Torquay.

iD Mobile coverage checker

iD Mobile’s coverage checker will show an overview of 5G coverage both indoors and outdoors in any given area, so you can get a clearer picture of what it’s like. You can also use this to check 4G and 3G coverage.

Check iD Mobile 5G coverage

4G coverage

In places where there’s no 5G, you’ll be using 4G (or 3G), and iD Mobile has no shortage of coverage for those things, due to its partnership with Three.

As you can see in the chart below, it has roughly 99.8% UK population coverage with 4G, which is largely in line with rival networks.

5G roaming abroad

iD Mobile doesn’t currently offer 5G roaming, but you can roam using 4G or 3G in 50 destinations – mostly in the EU.

5G network speeds

We don’t have data on iD Mobile’s 5G speeds, but we have plenty on Three’s, which is likely to be similar since they share infrastructure and spectrum.

Three then has an average 5G download speed of 237.7Mbps according to April 2023 data from Opensignal. Ookla meanwhile found in the first half of 2022 that Three’s median 5G download speed was 292.57Mbps, and rated Three the UK’s fastest 5G network.

In RootMetrics data covering the second half of 2022, Three was found to have a median 5G download speed of 202.8Mbps, and a 95^th percentile speed (meaning close to the maximum recorded by the network) of 739.4Mbps. That’s among the highest speeds we’ve seen for any network. Its 5^th percentile speed (in other words close to the lowest you’re likely to encounter on Three) was found to be 11.8Mbps, which also ranks well against rivals – beaten only by EE.

During the first half of 2021 RootMetrics also found that Three’s fastest median ‘everyday 5G’ (which is a metric that combines both 5G-only readings and switching between 5G and 4G) was 127.1Mbps.

It also has an average 5G download speed of 158.7Mbps according to September 2020 tests from Point Topic. These tests also found that its maximum 5G speed was 473Mbps and its median was 122Mbps.

However, speeds could significantly increase over time, as the networks acquire and leverage more spectrum (more on which further down).

In any case, even now 5G vastly outpaces 4G, which on Three averaged speeds of 22.2Mbps according to Opensignal data from October 2020.

Latency

Latency – measured in milliseconds (ms) - is the amount of time it takes a mobile network to respond to a request, before the data even starts moving on your phone.

That means a high latency can make data speeds feel lower than they are. As with speeds, we don’t have any latency data for iD Mobile, but Three’s median 5G latency could be 33ms according to 2021 Ookla data.

Three though (and therefore likely iD Mobile) could sometimes be a lot better than that, as according to RootMetrics its 5G latency in central London was recorded at just 17ms, while all other tested networks had a higher latency.

And as with speeds, latency on 5G is likely to improve as the UK’s networks to – one day it might get as low as 1ms.

iD Mobile’s 5G frequency allocation

iD Mobile uses Three’s 5G spectrum, which means it should have access to all the frequencies shown in the chart above. As you can see, most of its 5G spectrum is high frequency, covering 3.4GHz and above.

That’s no accident, because higher frequency spectrum is typically a better fit for speedy connectivity and large numbers of devices – two things that are key to 5G.

On the other hand, lower frequency spectrum is typically longer range and better at passing through walls, so a healthy holding of both types of spectrum is preferable – and iD Mobile through Three has that.

Those advantages of low frequency spectrum are also why Three/iD Mobile might use 700MHz spectrum (acquired at a 5G spectrum auction) for 5G – though being low frequency it’s not typically considered 5G spectrum.

As for how much 5G spectrum Three/iD Mobile has, it has 140MHz in total, or 160MHz if you include its 700MHz spectrum. That’s more than any other major network – EE has 80MHz (or 120MHz including the 700MHz spectrum), O2 has 80MHz (or 100MHz with the 700MHz added), and Vodafone has 90MHz (it doesn’t have any 700MHz spectrum).

Note however that spectrum holdings could increase in future, with spectrum in the 26GHz and 8GHz bands among others identified as potential auction candidates.