Vodafone has announced big plans this week, with seven UK cities set to get 5G trial networks imminently – they have an ambitious goal to bring 1 gigabyte per second speeds to people at work, home and everywhere in between. alfoncia are proud that our partner Vodafone, has chosen MediaCityUK as a location for its incubator base to test 5G – just a stones throw from alfonica’s northern office.
This news follows Vodafone recently coming out of Ofcom’s 5G spectrum auction with 50MHz of 3.4GHz spectrum, which it paid £378,240,000 for and specifically acquired the 3410MHz – 3460MHz part of the band.
This is more than any other rival acquired, EE and O2 each got 40MHz while Three won just 20MHz. This could have put Vodafone in a strong early 5G position, hence these early trials.
Want to know if 5G is going to impact your business right now? Well… the emergence of 5G will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary; it will exist alongside 4G as the speed develops over time but if you want to know if your device is 5G compatible or if you have any questions, please send us a message and we’d be happy to help.
When 5G does roll out it could be very beneficial for your business. It will allow for ultra-reliability and it will be a network you can depend on – this is especially helpful for industries such as healthcare. 5G will also offer greater capacity, which means more devices can connect and communicate at the same time. This is obviously important for the Internet of Things (IoT) as we connect our heating and office doors to the web.
Although this all sounds great we need to wait and see what happens, do you remember the fuss made around 4G? Did it deliver everything you had expected? It is unlikely, as the UK is still ranked 54th in the world for 4G coverage. What is the point in having great technology if you can only access it part of the time?
5G represents a great opportunity for the UK. Let’s hope the country make up for the mistakes it made over 4G. This could be the time for the uK to become the connectivity leaders of Europe. Stay tuned for more news!
