Telecommunications and Internet Service Provider Three UK recently announced that their 5G network will launch in August for both mobile phones and home broadband.
Theirs will be the third 5G network to launch in the United Kingdom following on from EE (already live) and Vodafone (July 3). It will initially be live in London, and then roll out across 25 cities including Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow.
EE is currently live in six cities (London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester) and already they have reported average speeds of 200Mbps.
Three UK claim that their service will be twice as fast as the oppositions’ thanks to its 140MHz of spectrum, though that remains to be seen.
In the meantime though, it will be worth your while ensuring that your mobile site is fully optimised for when 5G does hit your region. Here are three very simple pointers to remember when building your mobile site…
1. Make sure your video player is responsive and loads correctly on mobile. There is nothing worse then clicking on a video and it loads at full size and is unwatchable. The same goes for images, so make sure your coding methods and files types are up to date.
2. Keep your mobile site as user friendly as possible. Ensure that the text is easily readable and there is no need for sideways scrolling or zooming in. Also remember that it is much harder to navigate dropdown menus with your fingers than your mouse. And everyone’s absolute worst … pop-ups. They are not ideal on desktop, and nightmarish on mobile. If you must have them, keep it small and easy to close.
3. Finally, in a time when attention spans seem shorter than ever, make sure the load speed of the site is a low as possible. If a user has to wait for a page to load, they are going elsewhere and not coming back. Do this by compressing your images, using a reliable caching plugin, and ridding yourself of unneeded sections.