Sky Mobile is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) which uses O2’s infrastructure and spectrum. It launched a 5G service on January 16th, 2020, making it the third MVNO to do so (after BT Mobile and VOXI).

As it uses O2’s infrastructure, it also has 5G in the same places as O2, meaning 60 towns and cities at the time of writing.

You’ll find full details of them below, along with information on the next places Sky Mobile is likely to start offering 5G in.

Sky Mobile coverage checker

Sky Mobile has an online coverage checker that will give you a detailed look at 5G coverage across the UK, as well as highlighting 4G, 3G and 2G coverage.

5G coverage is currently very limited, even in many of the towns and cities that have 5G at all, so it’s definitely worth checking your coverage before buying a 5G plan or 5G phone.

CHECK COVERAGE

Which towns and cities have Sky Mobile 5G now?

Sky Mobile 5G is currently available in parts of all the locations in the chart above, though note that coverage won’t initially be comprehensive in these locations. This is true of all 5G networks.

What locations will Sky Mobile 5G roll out to next?

Since Sky Mobile uses O2’s network, we know that its 5G coverage will expand to the same places as O2, meaning the following locations are next in line.

While that’s all that’s been confirmed at the time of writing, we’d expect more places will also get Sky Mobile 5G before the end of 2020.

​How does Sky Mobile's 5G coverage compare to the other mobile networks?

There are currently 98 major towns and cities with 5G coverage from at least one UK mobile network. Sky Mobile (through O2) currently has 5G in 46 of these major locations, while EE has it in 61 such locations (along with a number of smaller ones), Vodafone has it in 29 such locations and Three currently offers it in 41, as well as offering 5G Home Broadband in London. These key locations are listed below.

4G Coverage

Sky Mobile will continue to offer 4G (as well as 3G and 2G) 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 3G and 2G coverage.

5G Network Speeds

Sky Mobile hasn’t said how fast its 5G network is and nor for that matter has O2 at the time of writing, but we know that typical current 5G speeds on most networks are around 150-250Mbps, so Sky Mobile is likely to be similar.

Late 2019 tests from Ookla (which runs Speedtest.net) meanwhile have found that O2 manages an average download speed of 159.48Mbps, so Sky Mobile again is likely to be similar to that.

Peak speeds are potentially far higher, with some networks pointing to 1Gbps or more, though an Opensignal report from 2019 found top UK 5G speeds came in at 599Mbps.

In any case, that’s still very fast when you consider that O2’s 4G download speeds average just 18Mbps according to an April 2020 Opensignal report.

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 late 2019 data from Ookla, 5G latency on UK networks averages around 21-26ms.

Sky Mobile’s 5G Spectrum

Sky Mobile's 5G spectrum holdings as compared to rivals can be viewed below.

As noted above, Sky Mobile uses O2’s spectrum, which can be seen in relation to other networks in the chart above (credit: Three).

The line at 100MHz marks the amount of contiguous 5G spectrum required for ‘true’ 5G according to the ITU (the global standards body on 5G technology). So Three is the only network currently in a position to offer true 5G according to the ITU’s definition of it, while Sky Mobile through O2 is in joint last along with EE and BT (which uses EE’s spectrum).