O2 4g bands help

marc.knuckle

I am looking to get a phone that uses all uk 4g bands apart from band 20.
I want to use a giffgaff/o2 sim in it but unfortunately they only ever used band 20/800 mhz for 4g so I thought i was stuffed but found mention on the giffgaff forums that some people in a similar position such as with iPhone 5 phones could now get 4g in some cities like London, leeds, newcastle to name a few. It's apparently because o2 are starting to allow use of the 1800mhz channel.

Until i know if this new phone will work on giffgaff/o2 for 4g in Birmingham i can't but it.

I called o2 and got through to the network team but they didn't think anyone was using this other frequency.

Any ideas or advice?

Regards, marc

d123

O2 only have an extremely small allocation of 1800Mhz, it's only used for congestion infill so can't be be relied on for service (in a given area it might be on a small number of sites with many surrounding sites not using it).

If you want to use 4G with o2 you need a phone that supports 800Mhz.

[Deleted User]

As d123 says if you want 4G on O2 you have to use 800Mhz.

Frequencies used on the O2 UK network
Frequency Protocol Class
900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2G
1,800 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2G
900 MHz UMTS/HSDPA/HSPA+/DC-HSPA+ 3G
2,100 MHz UMTS/HSDPA/HSPA+/DC-HSPA+ 3G
800 MHz LTE 4G

EE uses the following -

Frequencies used on the EE network
Frequency Protocol Class
1,800 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2G
2,100 MHz UMTS/HSDPA/HSPA+/DC-HSPA+ 3G
800 MHz LTE 4G
1,800 MHz LTE 4G
2,600 MHz LTE Advanced 4G

Also, if data is important to you then you will get a better service with one of the main networks than you will from an mvno like Giffgaff because main network customers get priority over mvno customers on data services.
Main networks are EE, Three, O2 and Vodafone.