O2 5G coverage checker

Last updated 12th July, 2023

O2 5G is available in parts of over 2,100 UK cities and towns at the time of writing, up from an initial launch in six places on October 17th, 2019.

Coverage in places with O2 5G won’t always be comprehensive, rather the network is focusing on “busy footfall areas” such as Waterloo in London. But that’s in line with rivals and the situation is improving over time.

Below we’ve included a full overview of O2’s 5G network, along with a list of all the major locations that O2 5G is available in, and a comparison to the coverage of other UK networks.

O2 5G Summary

How does O2's 5G coverage compare to others?

We track 120 major towns and cities in the UK for 5G coverage, and the networks stack up as follows:

• 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. 

It’s worth noting that a tick on this chart just means a network has some 5G coverage in a location – not that 5G will be available town or city-wide. So it’s always worth using a network’s official coverage checker to get a more detailed picture of 5G coverage in your area.

On top of that, indoor and outdoor coverage can differ. Even official coverage checkers won’t always be able to paint an accurate picture of indoor coverage, but they can give you some idea. In all cases though, 5G coverage should improve over time, so if you don’t have 5G where you are now, or if it doesn’t reach inside your home or office, it might arrive before too long.

Latest locations to get O2 5G

The most recent places that O2 has brought 5G to (as of July 2023) include Bromley, Canterbury, Enfield, Falkirk and Stirling, Harrow, Ilford, and Perth. 

Check O2 5G coverage

O2 coverage checker

O2 has an online coverage checker where you’ll be able to see 5G coverage. Simply enter your postcode or town to see coverage in your area. This is definitely worth doing, as O2 5G isn’t initially available everywhere, even within cities that have some 5G coverage.

You can also see 4G, 3G and 2G coverage on this page, with a breakdown of indoor and outdoor coverage.

4G coverage

If you’re not in a 5G coverage area then you’ll get 4G or 3G speeds, just like you would have before 5G. 

O2 has around 99% UK population coverage with 4G, 3G and 2G, which is comparable with rivals. Check out the chart below for a 4G coverage comparison between O2 and the other main UK networks, based on the latest available data.

5G roaming abroad

O2 offers roaming at no extra cost in the EU, with some plans extending that to 75 total destinations, including some outside Europe.

There’s a 25GB fair use limit, but you can roam at 5G speeds in most of the EU. At the time of writing, the following destinations are marked as offering 5G roaming:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madeira, Malta, Monaco, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Vatican City.

Note however that this depends on 5G coverage, so as with the UK you won’t get 5G everywhere.

5G Network Speeds

The most recent data we have for O2 includes RootMetrics results from the second half of 2022, in which O2 achieved a disappointing 71Mbps median 5G download speed, putting it below rivals.

The same report found that its 95^th percentile speed (so close to the highest) was 258.2Mbps, and its 5^th percentile one (so close to the lowest) was 5.4Mbps. These again are lower than rivals.

An earlier RootMetrics report from the second half of 2020 though found that O2’s highest overall 5G speed was 302.1Mbps, so a little higher than the 95^th percentile result above.

Similarly to the latest RootMetrics report, an Opensignal report from April 2023 found that O2’s average 5G download speed was just 75.0Mbps, which is lower than EE, Vodafone or Three.

Based on September 2020 data from Point Topic meanwhile, O2 has an average 5G download speed in UK-wide tests of 115.7Mbps. The same tests found that its median 5G download speed was 103Mbps, and that its maximum 5G download speed was 247Mbps. That maximum speed was recorded just outside Glasgow.

Elsewhere, Ookla recorded in the first half of 2021 that O2’s median 5G download speed was 155Mbps, which is rather higher than Point Topic found it to be, but a lot lower than RootMetrics.

Of course as O2’s coverage improves, its performance may well continue to do so too, but how much by remains to be seen.

Even now though, O2’s 5G speeds should be far higher than its 4G ones, as for example O2’s 4G download speeds average just 18.2Mbps according to an October 2020 report from Opensignal.

Latency

Latency - measured in milliseconds (ms) - is how long a mobile network takes to respond to a request before it even starts properly transferring data. On 4G networks latency is often around 30-50ms, but on 5G it could get as low as 1ms – though don’t expect that initially.

We don’t have much information on O2’s 5G latency, but 2021 data from Ookla suggests that it’s 31ms, so likely lower than 4G latency but not by as much as we’d hope to eventually see.

Still, even this improvement will benefit all sorts of things, including online gaming, loading streamed videos, and excitingly could also help allow for new use cases.

O2’s 5G frequency allocation

O2 currently uses the 3.6GHz and 3.4GHz frequencies to transmit its 5G signals. That’s higher than the frequencies it uses for other network types, as the chart above shows.

Being higher frequency tends to mean there’s greater capacity available, which can help with reliability, allowing the network to maintain high and consistent speeds even with loads of simultaneous users.

That’s important, as ever more devices are becoming connected, and – in particular with 5G - data demands are growing.

However, these high frequency bands can’t travel as far as lower frequency ones, and they aren’t as good at penetrating walls and other obstacles – which is why you might sometimes find you have 5G outside but not indoors. These are problems that mobile networks should be able to overcome though.

One way of overcoming this is to leverage low frequency spectrum to make up for these weaknesses. The 700MHz band – some of which was auctioned as part of the UK’s second 5G spectrum auction – has been identified as a candidate for this, though it could also work well for boosting 4G coverage in rural areas. At the time of writing it’s not clear whether O2 will use this for 4G, 5G, or both.

In terms of its 5G spectrum holdings, O2 currently has access to 40MHz of 3.4GHz spectrum and 40MHz of 3.6GHz spectrum, for 80MHz in total. That’s the same as EE but slightly less than Vodafone’s 90MHz and well below the 140MHz of 5G spectrum that Three has access to.

These totals don’t include the 700MHz spectrum, which isn’t generally considered ‘5G spectrum’ but which could still be used for 5G. If we factor that in then O2 has 100MHz of 5G spectrum (as it has access to 20MHz in the 700MHz band), while EE has 120MHz, Three has 160MHz, and Vodafone still has 90MHz.

While O2 has less 5G spectrum than some networks, it has arranged to trade some of its holdings with Vodafone, so that its full 80MHz can be contiguous, which can allow for higher speeds and lower latency. So that might give it an edge (though Three has a 100MHz contiguous block).

It’s worth also noting that there may yet be further 5G spectrum auctions in future, so these totals could change over time.