Sky Mobile 5G Coverage

Last updated 10th February, 2026

Sky Mobile’s 5G network currently has coverage for over 77% of the UK population at the time of writing, so it’s widely available.

Sky launched its 5G service on January 16th, 2020, making it the third MVNO to do so (after BT Mobile and VOXI). It uses O2’s infrastructure, so its coverage matches O2’s – meaning as O2’s 5G coverage increases, so too will Sky’s.

Below you’ll find full details of Sky Mobile’s 5G network, including a list of the key places that its 5G is available, and how it compares to other 5G networks.

 Sky Mobile Coverage

For a clearer picture of whether Sky Mobile’s 5G service is available where you need it, just enter any postcode that you want to check into our coverage checker at the top of this page.

Once done, you’ll see an overview of Sky Mobile’s 5G, 4G, and voice coverage in that area, along with the coverage of the UK’s other networks, so you can compare.

This data is real-time and sourced from both the mobile networks and independent sources, so it’s as accurate and up to date as possible.

How does Sky'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.

Sky Mobile has the same number of 5G locations as O2 below:

As noted above, coverage in most places isn’t comprehensive – in fact, it’s sometimes patchy, and it can also differ inside and out. A tick on the chart below just means a network reports some amount of coverage in one of these towns or cities, so it’s worth using Sky’s official coverage checker or our coverage checker to be sure the 5G coverage is in the bits you need.

The most recent places to get Sky Mobile 5G (via O2) as of February 2026 include parts of the Outer Hebrides, along with Preston and Walsall.

4G coverage

Sky Mobile will continue to offer 4G coverage, so until 5G coverage is comprehensive, this remains important, as Sky will revert to these network technologies in places where 5G isn’t yet available.

Through O2, Sky Mobile has around 99% 4G coverage, which is comparable with rivals as you can see in the table below. It also has a similar amount of 2G coverage.

How fast is Sky Mobile’s 5G network?

We don’t have much data on Sky Mobile’s speeds specifically, but we do have some on O2’s, and they might well be similar, since the same infrastructure and spectrum is used.

Our main data there includes a report from RootMetrics in the first half of 2025, where it found that O2’s median 5G download speed was fairly slow compared to rivals at 98.7Mbps. It also found that O2’s 95th percentile speed, which would be close to the highest speed you’re likely to get, was 323.2Mbps, and its 5th percentile one, which would be close to the lowest, was 5.1Mbps, which as with the median don’t make for great results.

There’s also Opensignal tests published in September 2024, which recorded an average 5G download speed of 80.1Mbps for O2. That’s a slower average than any other tested network achieved.

And in an Ookla report from the second half of 2025, it was found that O2’s median 5G download speed was 78.92Mbps and its 90th percentile 5G download speed was 268.42Mbps, both of which were the lowest on test.

Latency

Latency refers to how long a mobile network takes to respond to a request before it starts transferring data. It’s measured in milliseconds (ms) and a high latency can make even an otherwise fast network feel sluggish.

While Sky Mobile hasn’t detailed its 5G latency yet, we know that on 4G latency tends to be in the region of 30-50ms, and that eventually 5G could offer latency as low as 1ms. Right now though it’s likely to lie somewhere in the middle. Indeed, according to 2023 data from Speedtest, O2’s median 5G latency is 33ms.

When looking at loaded latency (meaning the latency when the connection is under heavy use), an Ookla report from 2025 found that O2’s was 1039.19ms.

What frequencies/bands does Sky Mobile use?

Sky Mobile uses the same spectrum as O2, which means it’s relying on the 40GHz, 26GHz, 3.6GHz, 3.4GHz and 700MHz bands for 5G at the time of writing. Most of those bands are high frequency, which typically means there’s more capacity available, helping with things like reliability and large numbers of simultaneous connections.

With the huge numbers of connected devices around and ever-growing data demands, that’s important, especially for 5G.

The lower frequency bands listed in the chart above are mostly used for 4G and 2G. These have different strengths, as they’re longer range and better at passing through obstacles.

Spectrum in the 700MHz band might be used for either 5G or 4G. This spectrum was acquired at the second 5G spectrum auction, and while it’s not generally considered ‘5G spectrum’ as it’s too low frequency, it has been identified as a candidate for strengthening 5G networks.

As for how much 5G spectrum O2 (and by extension Sky) has, they currently have 800MHz of 26GHz spectrum, 1GHz of 40GHz spectrum, 60MHz of 3.4GHz spectrum, 40MHz of 3.6GHz spectrum, and 20MHz of 700MHz spectrum, amounting to 1,920MHz in total. That’s identical to EE but slightly less than the combined 2,030MHz total of VodafoneThree.

It’s possible that these totals will change over time though, as there may yet be future 5G spectrum auctions.