Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 12 on Tuesday, with 5G support slated to be one of the flagship features of all four of this year’s new models. However, according to a report by The Telegraph, UK users may experience connectivity issues due to the country’s use of the 700MHz 5G band, which isn’t expected to be supported by the iPhone 12.
Rumors suggest the iPhone 12 will offer support for only sub-6GHz 5G and mmWave 5G, bands that aren’t widely used in the UK. Because of this, “industry insiders” cited in the report suggest the iPhone 12 may have “coverage problems”, which could lead to “customers searching for 5G coverage”.
Telecoms industry insiders have warned that the iPhone, which Apple is due on Tuesday, may not connect to the 700MHz 5G band. This could leave customers searching for 5G coverage, analysts have warned. “If it doesn’t support 700MHz then you end up with coverage problems,” said Matthew Howett, principal analyst at Assembly. “The spectrum bands that the iPhone works on are crucially important,” the report says.
The report says the new iPhone without support for 700MHz spectrum could give a huge advantage to UK network Three, which owns a considerable amount of 5G spectrum in bands that are expected to be usable by the iPhone.
The launch of the new iPhone without support for 700MHz spectrum could hand a key advantage to Three, which has acquired large amounts of 5G spectrum. Analysts say this could lead to a similar scenario to the launch of 4G in 2012 when EE was the only telecoms operator with enough 4G coverage to reliably offer the latest iPhone 5 with 4G connectivity.
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