Vodafone 5G coverage and roll-out

Last updated 11th July, 2023

Vodafone 5G is available in parts of at least 161 UK towns and cities at the time of writing, as well as at least 240 roaming locations across parts of the EU.

Its 5G network has grown quickly following a launch on July 3rd 2019, when its 5G service was initially limited to just parts of seven UK cities. You can expect Vodafone 5G coverage to continue growing quickly too – so if you don’t have it where you are currently, you might well do soon.

Below you’ll find full details of where Vodafone 5G is currently available both in the UK and abroad, along with information on Vodafone’s network speeds, 5G spectrum, and comparisons to the UK’s other 5G networks.

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

Of the 120 major towns and cities in the UK the current pecking order for 5G launched in those locations is:

• O2 has launched 5G in 88 of the 120 locations below. 
• Three has launched 5G in 108 of the 120 locations below. 
• EE has launched 5G in 111 of the 120 locations below. 
• Vodafone has launched 5G in 82 of the 120 locations below. 

Although 5G has been launched in the towns and cities listed below it does not mean that town or city has blanket 5G coverage across it. In fact, it is more likely that 5G may only have been launched in one or just a few areas to date. Of course, coverage will expand rapidly as time goes on.

Another equally important point is that of indoor and outdoor 5G coverage. Just because you have 5G outdoors it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have it inside your home. Equally, this applies to your place of work.

Latest locations to get Vodafone 5G

The most recent places that Vodafone has brought 5G to (as of July 2023) include Derby, Dumfries and Galloway, Durham, Halifax, Kilmarnock, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford, Preston, Torquay, and Wakefield.

Check Vodafone 5G coverage

Vodafone coverage checker

Vodafone has an online coverage tool where you can enter your postcode to get an accurate estimation of the 5G coverage in your area. We recommend that you check coverage in your area before buying a 5G phone or plan, as it isn't yet available everywhere.

Vodafone’s coverage map also shows 4G, 3G and 2G coverage, any available Vodafone Wi-Fi hotspots in the area, and can even give you an estimate of the speeds you can expect with each data type. Just tap on the ‘data speed info’ button to see this once you’ve entered a location or post code.

4G coverage

If you’re not in a 5G coverage area, then you’ll be using 4G or 3G. Vodafone has around 99% UK population coverage with 4G, and is in the process of switching off 3G. That puts it roughly in line with rivals.

Below you’ll find a 4G coverage comparison between Vodafone and the other main UK networks, based on the latest available data.

5G roaming abroad

Vodafone also offers a 5G roaming service, so you can use 5G abroad at no extra cost on select plans – or from £1 per day on others.

At the time of writing you can get 5G in at least 240 towns and cities across Germany, Italy, Spain, and Ireland if you're on Vodafone. Few other UK networks allow 5G roaming at the time of writing, and if you include Vodafone’s roaming locations then it possibly offers 5G in more places than any other major UK network.

In Italy 5G roaming is currently available in Milan, Rome, Turin, Naples, Bologna, and many more locations.

In Spain you can get it in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Zaragoza, Pamplona, Bilbao, La Coruña, Vigo, Vitoria, San Sebastián, Gijón, Logroño, Santander and more.

In Ireland you can get 5G in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Drogheda, Dundalk, Swords and Waterford.

And in Germany it's available in a huge number of places, including but not limited to Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Dortmund, Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt.

With few other networks yet announcing 5G roaming plans, this is a one way that Vodafone has an early 5G advantage. These are real 5G speeds too - in a test, Vodafone showed off top download speeds of 700Mbps in Madrid.

5G network speeds

Opensignal data from April 2023 found that Vodafone’s average 5G download speed was just 100.6Mbps, which is lower than any rival on test other than O2. Though older Point Topic data pointed to a slightly more impressive 143.6Mbps.

Similarly, RootMetrics data from the second half of 2022 found that Vodafone’s median 5G download speed was 107.4Mbps, so that’s in line with Opensignal’s average. The same report put Vodafone’s 95th percentile 5G speed (which should be close to the maximum recorded) at 322Mbps, and its 5th percentile (which should be close to its slowest recorded 5G speed) at 8.1Mbps.

Ookla data from the first half of 2021 meanwhile found that Vodafone’s median download speed was 159Mbps.

However, slightly older data from RootMetrics in the second half of 2021 showed higher results, with a highest median 5G download speed of 255.8Mbps – though that was only achieved in one city (Nottingham).

An even older RootMetrics report (from 2020) meanwhile recorded a maximum download speed on Vodafone of 545.6Mbps, which is among the highest recorded speeds we’ve seen for the network.

Vodafone itself claims that its 5G speeds average 150-200Mbps, with peak speeds of 1Gbps. According to Vodafone that means you’ll be able to download a full HD film in around 3 minutes, compared to over 15 minutes on 4G.

Indeed, Vodafone’s 4G speeds tend to average around 22.4Mbps based on October 2020 data from Opensignal. Even peak 4G speeds in the UK tend to be under 100Mbps, and 3G speeds are slower still, so 5G on Vodafone should be a significant upgrade.

Latency

Latency is how long the mobile network takes to respond to a request. It’s measured in milliseconds (ms), so it’s usually an almost imperceptible amount of time, but while on 4G networks it’s often around 30-50ms, with 5G it’s expected to ultimately get as low as 1ms.

This will help everything feel smoother and more instantaneous, which will benefit day to day things like online gaming and loading streamed videos, but also help enable new use cases.

Don’t expect it to be quite as low as 1ms yet – data from Ookla recorded in 2021 puts Vodafone’s median 5G latency at 29ms, while a RootMetrics report from late 2020 shows Vodafone’s 5G latency as being 34ms in central London, but that’s still an improvement on 4G latency.

Vodafone itself hasn’t yet said what latency to expect on its 5G network, but you can expect it to be low.

Vodafone’s 5G frequency allocation

5G signals (and all other mobile signals) are broadcast on various different frequencies, with different networks and different network technologies relying on different frequencies.

At the time of writing, for 5G Vodafone relies on the 3.4Ghz frequency and the 3.6GHz frequency – the latter of which was relatively recently acquired, at the second 5G spectrum auction.

So what’s the difference between all these frequencies? In brief, the lower the frequency the further it can travel, and the better it is at passing through obstacles such as walls. However, the amount of low frequency spectrum is rather limited, whereas higher frequency spectrum is typically available in larger capacity.

Having more available means it’s better able to keep up with demand, be that lots of simultaneous users, or demanding tasks such as streaming 4K video. That makes high frequency spectrum a generally better fit for 5G.

In terms of the amount of 5G capacity each network actually has, Vodafone for its part can use 50Mhz of 3.4Ghz spectrum and 40MHz of 3.6GHz spectrum, for 90MHz total. That’s slightly less than most rivals, with Three having 140MHz (or 160MHz if you count its 700MHz spectrum, which isn’t conventionally considered 5G spectrum, but may be leveraged for 5G networks).

Then there’s EE with 80MHz (or 120MHz including its 700MHz holdings), and O2 with 80MHz (or 100MHz counting the 700MHz band).

Note however that more 5G spectrum may yet be auctioned by Ofcom in future, so Vodafone and all the other networks may have opportunities to improve their holdings.

Vodafone is also making the most of its 5G spectrum, as it has arranged to trade some with O2 in order to put it all close together – which could help Vodafone improve the performance of its network.