Having hit the accelerator of deploying 5G standalone (5G SA) services towards the end of 2025, the UK’s leading operator EE has revealed that it has expanded 5G+ to more than 50 million people across some 61 towns and cities in the UK after embarking on increases in capacity and performance as 5G+ customer usage accelerates.

EE first introduced its 5G SA network in September 2024, launching in 15 cities across the UK, including Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield.

At launch, EE said its 5G SA network had been built to deliver up to 100 times more capacity than 4G connectivity, making it significantly better at handling demands from lots of devices at once.

The operator said the upgraded network would offer a smoother, more reliable and more secure mobile connection built for better live streaming, video calling and mobile gaming. In addition, it was attributed with supporting enhanced voice calls in more places, with faster setup times that reduce the delay between dialling a number and the phone starting to ring via voice over 5G (Vo5G) standalone.

Some of the most recent towns and cities gaining free 5G+ connectivity from EE include Aberystwyth, Antrim, Bangor, Barnsley, Cheltenham, Chicheste, Cirencester, Dorchester, Erskine, Melton Mowbray, Merthyr Tydfil, Newbury, Preston, Salford and St Austell.

The operator said that it has now exceeded its original target to reach 41 million people with 5G+ by spring 2026.

“This milestone shows the pace at which we’re building the UK’s most advanced mobile network,” said Greg McCall, chief security and networks officer at BT Group. “By expanding EE’s 5G+ coverage to millions more people and being the first in the world to launch new network technologies, we’re giving our customers more reliable and resilient connectivity in the places where it matters most.”

The operator added that the expansion of its 5G+ network has resulted in the 54% increase in monthly customer usage and to ensure customers receive optimal day-to-day experience on 5G+, EE has reallocated its 2.1GHz (2100MHz) spectrum across more than 4,000 mobile sites to deliver greater network capacity, stronger indoor coverage and improved upload speeds for 5G+ customers. This is seen as being particularly beneficial in built-up areas where demand is highest. EE plans to upgrade 5,000 more mobile sites in this way in the next few months.

EE also claimed that its 5G+ customers are also enjoying considerably faster download speeds after it established the UK’s first network to launch five carrier aggregation on its 5G+ enabled mobile sites. This is designed to allow compatible 5G+ smartphones and devices to combine the power of five spectrum bands at once. The company said this has resulted 10% faster download speeds on average and improved performance when streaming video.

As it was announcing its 5G+ expansion, EE revealed further progress on the roll-out of Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) technology to enable mobile sites close to each other to dynamically share capacity in real time. EE stated that it is the first network in the world – and the only in the UK – to deploy ARC technology operator, saying it has instantly boosted network performance by 20% without the need for additional masts.

ARC technology is seen as particularly beneficial in business use cases in busy locations such as train stations, high streets and city centres. Following the launch of the technology in Manchester and Edinburgh in 2025, ARC is now also live on EE’s 5G+ network in London. By the end of May 2026, it will be available in more of the UK’s busiest cities including Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield.

Meta is continuing to invest aggressively to meet its technology infrastructure requirements, involving datacentre expansion and supply chain deals to secure components for future capacity. The company’s latest quarterly earnings filing shows Meta has embarked on a strategy to sign up for multi-year cloud contracts driving $107bn in contractual commitments for Q1 2026.

For the quarter that ended in March 2026, Meta posted revenue of $56.3bn, a 33% increase from the same quarter in 2025.

The company has forecast that its capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, has increased by $10bn due to component price increases and additional datacentre costs, putting CapEx in the range of $125bn to $145bn.

Chief financial officer Susan Li said: “Our investments will support our training needs for future models, and most importantly, provide us with the inference capacity necessary to deliver personal and business agents to billions of people around the world, along with several other AI product experiences we’re developing.”

Responding to a question during the earnings call about balancing model training versus product launches and the potential impact on Meta’s 2027 capital expenditure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is moving towards greater capabilities and scaling of AI models. “We have the research team, which is focused on scaling increasingly intelligent models with capabilities for the specific things that we’re focused on, which are business and personal agents,” he said.

Beyond model development, Zuckerberg said: “We have our next set of more advanced models in training now. And that work will continue. I don’t think we’re going to be done with that anytime soon.”

He emphasised the significance of Meta AI models in product development. “The product team is really unlocked to be able to build things on top of our models because we now have a very strong model,” said Zuckerberg.

When Li was asked about how the company uses large language models in its ad business to direct adverts to users, she said: “The size and complexity would make them too cost-prohibitive.”

Instead, Li said the way Meta uses large language models is to transfer knowledge to smaller, more lightweight models. “The inference models are bound by strict latency requirements since they need to find the right ad within milliseconds, and that has, again, historically prevented us from meaningfully sizing up – to scale up their size and complexity,” she added.

Li said Meta plans to tackle this scaling issue with the introduction of an adaptive ranking model later this year, using the model complexity of a trillion parameters. “We made advances in the model architecture and co-design the system with the underlying silicon, so it maintains the sub-second speed that is required to serve ads at scale,” she added.

Commenting on Meta’s strategy, Forrester vice-president research director Mike Proulx said: “Meta’s future‑facing AI ambitions are being underwritten almost entirely by the company’s legacy business: advertising inside social media apps. There’s no material AI revenue yet.

“The question is whether Meta’s core can continue to act as a cash cow while the company reduces headcount and diverts focus toward AI,” he said. “If Meta’s ad engine slows, the market’s margin for patience shrinks fast. Meta’s slight dip in daily active users is already beginning to raise eyebrows. Q2 will tell us if it’s really just a blip or the start of a trend.”