Sky Mobile’s 5G network currently has coverage in 160 towns and cities at the time of writing, though coverage isn’t yet comprehensive in these places.

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 5G Summary

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

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

• O2 has launched 5G in 72 of the 120 locations below. 
• Three has launched 5G in 67 of the 120 locations below. 
• EE has launched 5G in 75 of the 120 locations below. 
• Vodafone has launched 5G in 44 of the 120 locations below. 

As noted above, coverage in most places isn’t comprehensive – in fact, it’s often quite 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 to be sure the 5G coverage is in the bits you need.

Latest locations to get Sky Mobile 5G

The most recent places to get Sky Mobile 5G (via O2) as of 18/02/2021 include Ambleside, Basingstoke, Bilston, Birkenhead, Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Bournemouth, Bradley Stoke, Brombourgh, Cheltenham, Clacton-on-Sea, Darlington, Dinas Powis, Dudley, Dunstable, Egham, Falmer, Gloucester, Hastings, Hebburn, Inverness, Iver Heath, Lancaster, Llandudno, Maidstone, Monifieth, Musselburgh, New Denham, Newbury, Portsmouth, Potters Bar, Reading, Rochdale, Salford, Solihull, Southampton, Stockport, Stanraer, Strathclyde, Swansea, Swindon, Wakefield, Watford, Wavetree, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton.

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 Sky 5G Coverage

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 roaming abroad

You can’t currently roam abroad at 5G speeds on Sky Mobile, but it’s not alone there, as only Vodafone and VOXI allow 5G roaming at the time of writing. However, on Sky Mobile you can roam in over 30 EU and EEA countries at no extra cost using 4G or 3G.

O2's 5G Network Speeds

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 comes from a Point Topic study from September 2020. This states that O2’s average 5G download speed is 115.7Mbps, while its median 5G download speed is 103Mbps, and its maximum 5G download speed is 247Mbps.

We also have data from Speedtest in Q3 2020, which recorded O2’s median 5G download speed at a much higher 176.9Mbps, so there’s not total agreement there.

Looking further back, there’s data from RootMetrics covering the first half of 2020. It found that O2’s maximum 5G download speed in London was 146.4Mbps and its median 5G download speed in Belfast was 121.3Mbps.

Why those cities? Simply because O2’s coverage wasn’t good enough at the time of the tests to get reliable data in other tested locations.

As coverage improves, recorded speeds likely will as well, and while these figures are for O2 rather than Sky, it’s all likely to benefit the latter too. Even now though, O2 (and by extension probably Sky’s) 5G speeds look a lot better than 4G, which according to an October 2020 report from Opensignal averages 18.2Mbps.

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 frequency allocation

Sky Mobile uses the same spectrum as O2, which means it’s relying on the 3.4GHz band for 5G at the time of writing, but will also soon be able to use some 3.6GHz spectrum, which O2 acquired at the second 5G spectrum auction in March 2021. 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, 3G, 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, but at the time of writing we’re not sure what Sky (through O2) will use it for. This spectrum was also acquired at the second 5G 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 access to 40MHz of 3.4GHz spectrum and 40MHz of 3.6GHz spectrum (so 80MHz in total), which is identical to what EE has but marginally less than Vodafone’s holdings of 90MHz and a lot less than Three’s total of 140MHz.

But while some networks have more spectrum than O2, the network has at least arranged to trade some spectrum with Vodafone, allowing it to obtain a contiguous block for all 80MHz – something which can help improve the speed and latency of 5G services.

Those totals don’t include the 700MHz spectrum, since as explained that’s not conventionally thought of as 5G spectrum, but if you factor that in then Sky Mobile has 100MHz, EE has 120MHz, Three has 160MHz, and Vodafone still has 90MHz, as it doesn’t have access to any spectrum in the 700MHz band.

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