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A new study from SignalTracker, which runs a popular Android mobile app (not iOS) for monitoring and testing mobile network performance, has compared the 5G mobile (mobile broadband) performance (speeds, coverage etc.) in India against the UK, Greece, Spain and Finland.
The results reveal that India has a higher proportion of 5G Standalone (5GSA) connectivity than the European countries in their sample (20% of its tests), with the UK (4% of its tests) and Greece having some of the weakest coverage. The UK (c.17%), Greece and Spain also had the highest proportion of users with so-called “fake 5G” (i.e. where Smartphones display a 5G icon, but your connection is actually using a 4G base station), while India and Finland had the lowest (c.5-6%).
Proportion (%) of Users by Mobile Connection Type
In terms of average mobile broadband download speeds, 5G NSA users in Finland topped the table with 229Mbps (Megabits per second) and in fact they were ahead of every other country in all of the various different mobile technology types. By comparison, the UK seemed to be closer to the c.60Mbps level for 5G NSA connections, although 5G SA links did touch the c.100Mbps line.
Average Download Speeds by Mobile Connection Type
The new report is fairly limited in the data it provides and the number of countries involved, thus we can’t really gleam too much from the limited testing, except to say that the UK’s major mobile networks (EE, Vodafone / Three UK and O2) continue to underdeliver when compared against other countries (something we’ve seen in other studies too).
Improvements are on the way, with all of the major mobile operators now making big investments in 5GSA connectivity, although it may still take a few years for that to fully manifest and by then we’ll be starting to talk about the arrival of future 6G networks.