03 October 2024

As part of efforts to build support for a merger with Three UK, Vodafone UK has claimed that their joint plans for a nationwide roll-out of 5G Standalone technology could save regular road users £2 billion a year on fuel and boost productivity through remote working on trains by £1 billion (GVA) a year.

Most existing 5G networks in the UK are Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they’re still partly reliant on some older 4G infrastructure. 5G SA, in contrast, reflects a pure end-to-end 5G network that can deliver improvements such as ultra-low latency times, faster mobile broadband upload speeds, network slicing capabilities, better support for IoT devices, increased reliability and security.

Vodafone has already made 5G SA technology available in the busy areas of 23 cities and more than 300 locations across the UK, although it’s currently only accessible to customers with supporting devices on their Ultra plans. But the operator has also pledged, as part of their merger with Three UK, to extend the service to more than 99% of the UK’s population by 2034 and push fixed wireless access (home broadband) to 82% of homes by 2030.

As per new modelling by WPI Strategy, there could be up to 28.2 million train journeys every year in the UK where people want to work, but don’t due to poor connectivity. Changing this could deliver £1 billion in extra productivity for the UK economy. In addition, the survey claims that 5G SA could help to reduce train delays, which would save £10 million in delay compensation that could be reinvested into critical infrastructure. Similarly, reduced congestion and journey delays for freight drivers thanks to 5G-connected devices on the UK’s roads would equate to productivity savings of £140 million per year for businesses in the sector by reducing traffic, making journeys smarter, and deliveries more time efficient.