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 75 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?

TThere 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 47 of these major locations, while EE has it in 63 such locations (along with a number of smaller ones), Vodafone has it in 30 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

While there isn’t much data on Sky Mobile’s 5G performance yet, there is some on O2’s, and since Sky uses O2’s infrastructure and spectrum, it might be broadly similar.

The chart above shows some of O2’s key 5G speeds data, including an average 5G download speed of 159.48Mbps according to Ookla. Though that figure was recorded in late 2019, so may not be totally up to date.

Most of our data though comes from RootMetrics, and this is more recent, 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.

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).