5G Ultra || iOS 18 || 5G Standalone Greyed Out - Solved

[Redski]

After over an hour to 191 and no clear solution, fix or confidence in getting the ability to use the 5G Ultra on the plan if taken out two weeks ago, I resorted to , Chat GPT and solved the issue with 5G Ultra now enabled on my iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18 and wanted to share here incase it helps anyone that’s experiencing the same issue and save the pain of being on hold, triaged and asked to do a bunch of irrelevant actions that won’t fix you via 191.

Problem : Have a 5G Ultra plan and the 5G standalone option in iOS 18 is greyed out and so cannot be enabled. 

Fix : I was trying to run it on my existing, plastic physical SIM card which was the issue. So, I went into Settings > SIM and Convert to eSIM. I had to run it twice as it failed the first time. Second go was successful. Once I converted my physical, plastic SIM to an eSIM and rebooted my iPhone the 5G Standalone option was available and I could activate it.

Hooe it helps someone else the onerous and frustrating UX I had to go through !

Thanks

[antoniomechev]

Finally one person cracked that problem. Vodafone support had no idea what to tell me when I asked about why my toggle is grey/inactive, but I wasn’t surprised at all. They are all incompetent as expected. 
I did what you suggested and it worked!! Convert to eSIM, reboot and the 5G Standalone toggle got active. 
thank you for that mf 

[Redski]

A pleasure ! Glad it managed to help someone else too as I got super frustrated with the lack of knowledge and swings and roundabouts from Voda with no solution.

[mounsog2]

I have spent the last 2 days trying to enable the greyed out 5G SA switch also with very little help from Vodafone so ended up researching it myself. I had a lightly different problem, in that I am already using an eSIM. I found from a Vodafone partner website they had all the reasons why it couldn’t be enabled and the problem comes down to both physical Sims and eSIMs and when they were issued. 

SIM Card Compatibility – If you’re still using a physical SIM that was issued before April 2022 or an eSIM issued before January 2024, you’ll need to replace it with a new SIM that supports 5G Ultra.

So in my case I had to follow the physical Sim swap process, even though I am using an eSIM, in the Vodafone account under settings, manage and physical sim swap which took a few minutes to complete and this issued a brand new eSIM and problem solved, 5G SA switch enabled and 5G Ultra working on my iPhone 16. 

Hope this helps. 

[anuraj]

How do you know that you’re connected to 5g ultra ?

[Lucy_F]

Information regarding 5G Ultra can be found via this section of our website. 

[mounsog2]

Use something like nPerf app and at the bottom where it says network connection type 5G SA, it means you are connected to 5G Ultra, if it says 5G NSA, then it mean you are connected to standard 5G

[mcrpanda]

thanks for the details!  it worked for me! Replaced the old eSIM with a new one, and the 5G standalone option is turned on by default.

[naanaa]

How exactly did you do this?

Options seem to have changed. I cant do a “physical sim swap” anymore. It only says delete sim - and when I do that it sends a new QR code…but 5G standalone is still greyed out. 

[naanaa]

Figured it out. All working now!

[mcrpanda]

thanks it worked for me! Replaced the old eSIM with a new one, and the 5G standalone option is turned on by default.