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Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has today announced that their latest 5G Standalone (5GSA) mobile network will be going live in a further 17 new towns and cities by the end of 2025. On top of that, customers have been told to expect a “significant boost” to 5G connectivity as they become the “first operator in the world” to deploy Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) tech.
Just to recap. The majority of 5G mobile networks today are still Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they are partly reliant upon older and slower 4G infrastructure. But SA networks are pure end-to-end 5G that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better mobile broadband speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, support for Voice over 5G SA (Vo5G) calling, and increased reliability and security etc.
EE officially began launching a range of new 5G SA supporting mobile plans across 15 major UK cities in September 2024 (here) and they’ve since been expanding their coverage. In fact, the operator’s last major 5GSA coverage update in July 2025 announced that a further 45 locations would start to gain access to the service by the end of August 2025 (here).
The first of two big new developments today is that EE has announced a list of the next 17 locations to benefit from their 5GSA deployment between now and the end of December 2025, which we’ve listed below. EE has previously informed ISPreview that they only announce 5GSA availability once a location has “at least 95% outdoor coverage“, which helps to ensure a good level of connectivity.
EE’s 17 New 5GSA Locations (Sept to Dec 2025)
1. Basildon
2. Bolton
3. Brighton and Hove
4. Colchester
5. Gloucester
6. Lincoln
7. Maidstone
8. Newcastle-upon-Tyne
9. Northampton
10. Oxford
11. Plymouth
12. Poole
13. Portsmouth
14. Reading
15. Southampton
16. Southend-on-Sea
17. Telford
The other big development today is that EE’s customers in Manchester and Edinburgh have just become the first in the UK to benefit from the operator’s deployment of a “groundbreaking new technology” – Ericsson’s Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) solution. This essentially allows mobile sites in close vicinity to one another to pair up and share capacity (i.e. inter-site 5G downlink carrier aggregation), which can boost network performance without the need to deploy additional radio equipment (especially useful in busy areas at peak times).
Sadly, EE didn’t provide any real-world benchmarks to show the impact on mobile broadband performance, but the operator does claim that combining spare capacity from multiple independent cell sites in this way can increase download (downlink) data performance by around 20% on average (or more than double it “under ideal conditions“).
The technology was initially trialled in Bristol and has now gone live across selected sites in Manchester and Edinburgh, being activated just in time for the latter’s Fringe and International Festivals. The focus is on deploying the technology across busy city centre sites where capacity is most needed, and EE plans to expand the rollout to London, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast, Cardiff, Newcastle, Sheffield and Sunderland “throughout the next year“.
Greg McCall, Chief Networks Officer at BT Group, said:
“EE customers are the first in the world to benefit from this technology, with millions of them getting a huge boost to the 5G connectivity they rely on every day. By increasing capacity in this way, our customers will get faster speeds and an even more reliable experience instantly. It is a real game-changer and yet another example of how the nation gets a better network experience on EE.
We are building our 5G standalone network at an unprecedented pace to connect customers, communities, and the country to the most reliable and powerful mobile experiences. For those people wanting to get the most out of the newest 5GSA-enabled smartphones, they need the UK’s best 5G network to match and that’s exactly what EE delivers.”
EE clarified that in order to deploy ARC technology they do have to add a small optical pluggable device in each baseband unit to enable the capacity sharing, which then fosters a software-driven approach that allows EE to scale performance efficiently and keeps infrastructure costs low; catering for demand where it’s needed the most. In Edinburgh, for example, sites supporting the city’s Waverley Station have been boosted, while in Manchester it has been deployed in sites across the city centre.
Device compatibility is of course still an issue for 5GSA adoption in general, although such things usually resolve themselves with time as consumers gradually upgrade – many modern Smartphones do now support it on EE’s network. Customers with an EE 5GSA-compatible device will also see the biggest gains from ARC technology, as these phones can tap into multiple 5G frequency bands simultaneously.