Talkmobile 5G Coverage Checker

Last updated 20th March, 2024

Talkmobile is a small name in mobile networks, but it’s owned and operated by a big one – namely Vodafone, and it offers 5G in the all the same places. That means Talkmobile 5G is available in at least 318 towns and cities across the UK at the time of writing.

Being owned by Vodafone also means that Talkmobile’s 5G coverage will improve when Vodafone’s does, so it’s got a lot of might behind it.

Below you’ll find an overview of all the key places that Talkmobile 5G is currently available, along with other significant aspects of its 5G network, and a look at how Talkmobile compares to the UK’s other 5G services.

Talkmobile 5G Summary

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

There are too many towns and cities to track here, but we monitor which networks offer 5G coverage in 120 major UK towns and cities, so you can see at a glance how they compare in the most significant locations.

Talkmobile has the same number of 5G locations as Vodafone below:

• O2 has launched 5G in 93 of the 120 locations below. 
• Three has launched 5G in 111 of the 120 locations below. 
• EE has launched 5G in 114 of the 120 locations below. 
• Vodafone has launched 5G in 92 of the 120 locations below. 

It’s worth being aware however that a tick next to a location on the chart below simply means that a network reports having some 5G coverage there, but in many cases that coverage won’t be comprehensive, so it’s still worth taking a look at a network’s dedicated coverage checker to see exactly how good its 5G coverage.

Latest locations to get Talkmobile 5G

The most recent places that Talkmobile (via Vodafone) has brought 5G to (as of March 2024) include Darlington, Falkirk and Stirling, Hemel Hempstead, Kirkcaldy, Milton Keynes, Motherwell, Rochester, Stevenage, Tonbridge, and Walsall.

Talkmobile coverage checker

You can use Talkmobile’s online coverage checker to see both indoor and outdoor coverage for 5G, 4G, and 2G anywhere in the UK.

We’d always recommend doing this to check coverage in your area before buying a 5G phone or plan, as not everywhere yet has 5G.

CHECK TALKMOBILE’S 5G COVERAGE

4G coverage

You’ll still be able to use 4G with your 5G Talkmobile plan, so if you’re in a place that doesn’t yet have 5G coverage then you’re likely to still get a signal.

You can see an overview of Talkmobile’s 4G population coverage along with that of other networks below.

5G roaming abroad

One of the big perks of Vodafone is that it lets you roam abroad at 5G speeds, and while we couldn’t see mention of this on Talkmobile’s site, a customer service agent assured us that the same was true of Talkmobile – which would make sense since Vodafone owns the network.

That means you should be able to roam using 5G in at least 344 towns and cities in Spain, Germany, Italy, and Ireland.

These include locations like Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Seville, and many others in Spain, plus Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and more in Germany, along with Rome, Naples, Milan and others in Italy, and Dublin, Cork, Limerick and more in Ireland.

5G network speeds

We don’t have much data on Talkmobile’s 5G speeds, but since Vodafone owns and operates the network it’s likely that the two companies have comparable speeds, and we know a lot about Vodafone’s.

In terms of median 5G download speed then, Vodafone’s is 158.3Mbps according to a report from RootMetrics covering the second half of 2023. That report also found that Vodafone’s 95th percentile 5G download speed (which in other words would be in the top 5% of recorded speeds) was 401.8Mbps, and its 5th percentile speed (which would be in the bottom 5%) was 11.6Mbps.

However, Vodafone’s actual peak speeds might be significantly higher than the 95th percentile result above, as RootMetrics found in 2020 that Vodafone’s top 5G download speed was 545.6Mbps.

As for average 5G download speeds, Vodafone’s is just 114.3Mbps according to an Opensignal study from September 2023.

And a Speedtest report from the second half of 2023 put Vodafone’s median 5G download speed at 141.71Mbps.

So Vodafone’s 5G speeds seem a bit all over the place, but broadly it’s likely that they average somewhere between 100-200Mbps, depending on location. That’s somewhere between four and eight times faster than the average speeds you can likely expect with 4G.

Latency

As with speeds, we don’t really know anything about Talkmobile’s 5G latency, but it’s again likely to be similar to Vodafone’s, which could mean a median of 31ms (milliseconds) if 2023 data from Speedtest is accurate.

Latency is a measure of how long a network takes to respond to a request, so it factors in to how speedy a network feels, and can be a big factor in smooth online gaming, among other things. Lower numbers are better here then, and the figures we’re seeing so far are slightly better than on 4G.

Talkmobile’s 5G frequency allocation

Talkmobile uses all the same 5G frequencies as Vodafone, which specifically means 3.6GHz and 3.4GHz spectrum.

As you can see in the chart above, those are higher frequencies than its uses for 2G, 3G and 4G, which is because higher frequency spectrum is available in greater capacity and good therefore for coping with large numbers of users.

It doesn’t travel as far as lower frequency spectrum though, which can mean more infrastructure is needed to provide comprehensive coverage.

In total, Vodafone (and therefore Talkmobile) has access to 40MHz of 3.6GHz spectrum and 50MHz of 3.4GHz spectrum – so it has 90MHz of spectrum used for 5G in total.

For reference, EE and O2 both have 80MHz of spectrum in high, 5G-friendly bands in total, while Three has 140MHz. However, those networks (but not Talkmobile or Vodafone) are also using some lower frequency 700MHz spectrum for 5G, bringing their holdings up to 160MHz in the case of Three, 120MHz in the case of EE, and 100MHz in the case of O2.

Any or all of the networks may gain access to additional 5G spectrum in future though, as there might be more 5G spectrum auctions.