Virgin Media O2 launches 5G+ across Northern Ireland

From Belfast to Ballycastle, more than 800,000 residents are now within Virgin Media O2’s 5G+ network in Northern Ireland. The service is live across five cities, 22 large towns and 382 smaller towns, villages and hamlets, including Derry, Lisburn, Armagh and Portrush.

This is 5G Standalone (5G SA), meaning the mobile service runs on a 5G core without relying on older mobile generations such as 4G. Virgin Media O2 says the core is cloud-based, increases capacity, cuts latency — the delay in a connection — and can handle more connected devices.

The rollout covers all six counties and follows Virgin Media O2’s launch in Wales in May 2026. When it announced the Welsh expansion, the carrier said its 5G SA network covered 90 percent of the UK population. Virgin Media O2 first launched the standalone network in February 2024.

The work is part of the operator’s £700 million ($944m) investment in its UK network this year. Professor Robert Joyce, O2’s director of mobile access engineering, said the Northern Ireland upgrade would bring faster speeds, lower latency and a more reliable mobile experience to more people.

In practical terms, residents in the newly covered towns gain access to a standalone 5G service that Virgin Media O2 says offers faster speeds, less delay and greater reliability. The network also has more capacity and can connect more devices. The coverage and performance claims come from the operator; no independent performance measurements are cited, so the size of the improvement for an individual connection remains unestablished.