5G Home Broadband: Coverage Checker, Speeds & Best Value Deals

5G home broadband starts from £19/month and gives you fibre broadband speeds with no need for a phone line or engineer visit.

If you’re living in an area that has 5G coverage, 5G broadband can be a good alternative to regular fixed-line home broadband. Unlike fibre broadband or cable broadband, there’s no need to have a phone line or cable at your home. You can easily set it up yourself with no need for an engineer visit. In addition, there’s flexibility to bring your broadband connection with you (e.g. on a weekend away from home or when you’re moving to a different address).

In this article, we’ll look at 5G home broadband in the UK. We’ll start by asking what 5G home broadband is and whether you’re able to get it at your address. We’ll then look at the 5G home broadband providers in the UK (Three Broadband, EE and Vodafone) before comparing them to traditional fibre broadband providers like BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.

What is 5G Home Broadband?

In the UK, 5G home broadband is a new technology that allows you to get fibre broadband speeds without a phone line or cable. It uses wireless 5G technology to deliver the broadband service into your home – the same technology that powers your 5G mobile phone.

With 5G broadband, you can get download speeds in excess of 100Mbps which is faster than the fibre broadband service available in many homes. This is all available with a simple plug-and-play setup, no need for an engineer visit and often rapid next-day delivery.

You can use 5G broadband for all of the same thing you’d use regular fibre broadband for. This includes using 5G broadband on devices like your laptop, tablet, games console, smart TV, mobile phone and other smart home devices. You’ll get a 5G router or ‘5G hub’ which produces a wi-fi signal for all of your devices to connect to. It will also offer Ethernet functionality for connecting wired devices to your home network.

5G Home Broadband Providers

In the UK, there are presently three main providers of 5G home broadband: Three Broadband, EE and Vodafone.

Three 5G Broadband

Three Broadband is the largest and most significant provider of 5G broadband in the UK. They offer 5G broadband with unlimited data from £19/month with an average download speed of 100-200Mbps. There’s no upfront fee on Three’s 5G home broadband and you’ll get free next-day delivery of your Three 5G Hub included in the price.

You can get an exclusive £2/month discount on Three’s 5G broadband when you place your order through this link. There’s no need to use any voucher codes during checkout but you’ll need to complete the entire order process online.

Service	Data	Monthly Cost (will rise each April by £2)
Three 5G Hub	Unlimited data 150Mbps average speed	£19.00 per month No upfront fee 24 month contract	See deal
Three 5G Hub	Unlimited data 150Mbps average speed	£28.00 per month No upfront fee 1 month contract	See deal

See all Three 5G Home Broadband deals →

You can also add an Apple TV 4K set-top box to your 5G home broadband service for a couple of pounds extra each month. For more information, read our in-depth Three 5G home broadband review.

EE 5G Broadband

EE offers a 5G home broadband service for £45/month, with a £100 upfront fee for the 5G router and antenna. They advertise a 150Mbps average download speed on their 5GEE Home broadband service, with a download limit of 1,000GB (1TB) per month.

Unfortunately, EE’s 5G broadband service is nearly three times more expensive than Three’s 5G home broadband (possibly because EE would rather you sign up to their regular fibre broadband plans instead). However, it might be the only viable 5G home broadband option in many areas as EE have 5G coverage in many more postcodes than other networks.

Service	Data	Monthly Cost (will rise each March by £1.50)
5GEE Home	500GB data	£45.00 per month plus £100.00 upfront 18 month contract	See deal
5GEE Home	Unlimited data	£50.00 per month plus £100.00 upfront 18 month contract	See deal

See all EE 5G Home Broadband deals →

For more information, read our review of EE’s 5G home broadband.

Vodafone 5G Broadband

Vodafone also offers a 5G home broadband service known as GigaCube with a choice of either 100GB, 200GB or fully unlimited data. You can choose from a range of GigaCube price plans between £30 and £50 per month. There’s also an upfront fee for the router: between £50 and £100 on an 18-month plan, or £325 on a 1-month rolling contract.

The following table shows the Vodafone GigaCube 5G price plans that are currently available:

Service	Data	Monthly Cost (will rise each April by £3)
Vodafone GigaCube 5G	200GB data	£28.00 per month plus £45.00 upfront 18 month contract	See deal
Vodafone GigaCube 5G	Unlimited data	£35.00 per month plus £15.00 upfront 18 month contract	See deal
Vodafone GigaCube 5G	200GB data	£38.00 per month plus £150.00 upfront 1 month contract	See deal
Vodafone GigaCube 5G	Unlimited data	£58.00 per month plus £150.00 upfront 1 month contract	See deal

See all Vodafone 5G Home Broadband deals →

For more information, see our review of the Vodafone GigaCube. Vodafone also offers traditional fixed-line fibre broadband.

Other Providers

Unfortunately, other providers such as BT, O2, Sky and Virgin Media do not currently offer 5G home broadband. However, it might be possible to do-it-yourself and to build your own 5G broadband solution with a 5G router and 5G SIM card.

To start off, you’ll need to buy an unlocked 5G home broadband router. At the moment, most people choose to buy the Huawei 5G CPE Pro. This is by far the most popular 5G home broadband router in the UK (it’s also the 5G router that’s provided by Three, EE and Vodafone). This works with all 5G mobile networks in the UK but there’s a rather hefty upfront fee for it (normally in the region of £400).

Once you have your own 5G home broadband router, you’ll need to pair it with a 5G SIM card of your choice. Ideally, this should be a 5G SIM card that gives you unlimited data so you can use 5G home broadband without the need to worry about download limits.

When choosing an unlimited data SIM card, keep an eye out on the fair usage limits for each network. For instance, EE imposes a fair use limit of 600GB per month on their unlimited data SIM cards (as well as a limit on tethering to 12 devices). O2 currently prohibits the use of unlimited data SIM cards inside a mains-powered device (this includes 5G home broadband routers).

For more information on the do-it-yourself solution, you can read our Huawei 5G CPE Pro review and our guide to using your SIM card in a 4G or 5G router.

5G Broadband VS Fibre Broadband

5G home broadband (or 5G Fixed Wireless Access) is the new alternative to fibre broadband.

The following table shows a side-by-side comparison of 5G home broadband against regular fibre broadband:

5G Home Broadband	Traditional Fibre Broadband
Plug-and-play broadband with no need for a phone line. Available at selected locations.	Fibre broadband is delivered through a phone line or cable. Available in 90% of UK homes.
Starts from £19/month (100Mbps+ download speed). No set-up fee (plug and play).	Starts from £22/month (63Mbps speed) or £15/month (100Mbps speed). Set-up fees may apply.
Simply plug in your 5G home broadband router and start using it. No engineer visits required.	It takes around 2 weeks to install and activate fibre broadband. An engineer visit may be required.
5G broadband can be taken with you to a different location (coverage permitting).	Fibre broadband is tied to one physical address and will need to be set-up again when you move home.
Can be susceptible to interference (e.g. from weather) or congestion. 5G coverage is dependent on location.	Less likely to be affected by interference or congestion. May give more stable download speeds.

If you’re looking for traditional fibre broadband, the following alternatives are the most widely available. They start from £22/month with average download speeds of 63-67Mbps:

Service	Download Speed	Monthly Cost
Superfast	61Mbps average download	£22.00 per month No upfront fee 24 month contract Monthly cost may rise during contract	See deal
Fibre 2	67Mbps average download	£25.00 per month No upfront fee 24 month contract Monthly cost will rise each April by £3	See deal
Fibre	66Mbps average download	£25.99 per month No upfront fee 24 month contract Monthly cost will rise each April by £3	See deal
Sky Superfast	61Mbps average download	£26.00 per month plus £5.00 upfront 24 month contract Monthly cost may rise during contract	See deal
Fibre 65	67Mbps average download	£28.00 per month plus £4.95 upfront 18 month contract Monthly cost will rise each April by £3	See deal
Fibre 2	67Mbps average download	£31.99 per month plus £31.99 upfront £50 reward card 24 month contract Monthly cost will rise each April by £3	See deal
EE Fibre 67	67Mbps average download	£31.99 per month plus £31.99 upfront 24 month contract Monthly cost will rise each April by £3	See deal

In some areas, faster fibre broadband services are also available using technologies such as full fibre, cable and G.fast. For more information, see our full guide to home broadband services in the UK.

More Information

For more information on specific 5G home broadband services, please see the Three Broadband, EE and Vodafone websites. There’s also further information about 4G and 5G broadband on this website.