The UK network operator EE, and its parent company BT, is considering to deploy its 5G network within the next 18 months. This was mentioned to industry analysts by the CEO of BT, Gavin Patterson, and it means that the carrier could start rolling out its 5G network by 2019, which is a year earlier than the deployment date estimated by many industry insiders. Deploying its 5G network earlier than the competition will allow EE to maintain its lead in terms of network coverage, reliability, and performance, a position that it enjoys primarily due to the earlier rollout of its 4G LTE network. The carrier’s 4G LTE network has already managed to cover 75-percent of the United Kingdom back in 2016, and it aims to cover at least 95-percent of the country’s land area by 2020.
The network operator’s parent company, the BT Group, has been involved in the development of the 5G network standard and it has already partnered with telecommunications equipment suppliers and other carriers in researching 5G technologies. For example, the company announced back in 2016 that it has partnered with Huawei in developing 5G technologies like network slicing in laboratories across the United Kingdom. Network slicing is a component of the 5G standard that ensures the flexibility of cellular networks by permitting the carrier to allocate different data speeds, coverage, and reliability to different consumer and industrial use cases using a shared infrastructure. Moreover, the BT Group has also been involved in the development of a “5G Action Plan” back in 2016, which aims to accelerate the rollout of 5G networks in European countries.
It should also be noted that EE, along with the other three UK wireless carriers, already hold spectrum that could be used to deploy 5G networks. EE managed to obtain 40MHz of the 3.4GHz band for £303 million ($408 million) earlier this year in an auction conducted by the UK government. Meanwhile, O2 also acquired 40MHz of the 5G spectrum while Vodafone and Three were able to obtain 50MHz and 20MHz of the 3.4GHz frequency respectively. If EE manages to begin deploying its 5G network in the United Kingdom next year, consumers may not have to wait long before they could take advantage of the improved speeds and reduced latency that the new networks could offer, since smartphone manufacturers like Samsung are expected to launch 5G-compatible smartphones early next year.