United Kingdom Archives | Page 8 of 8

Five months ago, we started using the Ookla 5G Map^TM to track 5G across the world. In the months since, 5G deployments have increased exponentially — where we saw 294 around the world in May, today there are more than that in Switzerland alone. Today we’re exploring where 5G is gaining the most traction, including an analysis of how much faster 5G is than 4G in various markets.

Countries with the most 5G deployments

The Ookla 5G Map reveals that Switzerland is winning the race of 5G expansion with more than twice as many commercially available deployments as second-place South Korea. Kuwait has the third largest number of 5G deployments in the world.

Ookla_Countries-with-the-most-5G-deployments-2

It’s interesting to note that of the world’s six largest economies, three do not have commercially available 5G at all (China, Japan and India). China does have 29 locations where 5G is in pre-release (with 5G network hardware in place but not yet accessible to consumers). Japan is expected to launch 5G in 2020 and 5G will likely be available in India in 2021.

The other three largest economies (the U.S., Germany and the U.K.) do feature among the 10 countries with the most commercially available 5G deployments, although they individually have many fewer deployments than Switzerland, South Korea and Kuwait.

5G downloads are at least 300% faster than 4G

In theory, 5G could eventually offer download speeds about 1300% faster than those on 4G. Real-world factors affect those numbers, though, so we examined data from Speedtest Intelligence^TM to see what consumers actually experienced in several key markets between June and August 2019.

**Comparing Mean Speeds on 5G and 4G**
Speedtest^Ⓡ Results | June-August 2019
Country	4G Download (Mbps)	4G Upload (Mbps)	5G Download (Mbps)	5G Upload (Mbps)	% Difference Download
Australia	60.59	16.37	258.18	33.25	326.1%
Bahrain	28.80	13.43	311.41	29.43	981.3%
Kuwait	34.02	18.36	352.93	23.24	937.4%
Qatar	62.27	17.57	303.57	36.78	387.5%
Saudi Arabia	42.11	16.50	395.04	33.75	838.1%
South Korea	64.79	14.66	393.07	30.33	506.7%
Switzerland	50.65	20.10	362.75	43.12	616.2%
United Arab Emirates	59.23	20.12	334.27	32.07	464.4%
United Kingdom	31.03	11.47	181.87	18.34	486.1%
United States	34.33	9.98	477.42	21.93	1290.7%

The mean download speed over 5G was fastest in the U.S. and also showed the largest percent difference when compared with mean download speed over 4G. Saudi Arabia had the second fastest mean download speed over 5G with South Korea coming in a close third. On the other end of the spectrum, the U.K. had the slowest mean download speed over 5G. Australia was the second slowest and Bahrain third slowest. Bahrain showed the second highest percent improvement when comparing 4G and 5G download speeds, though, and Kuwait was third. Australia showed the lowest percent increase between 4G and 5G download speeds and Qatar had the second lowest.

Mean upload speeds over 5G are less remarkable, though in almost every country we analyzed they represent a 50-120% improvement over those available on 4G. Kuwait was the exception, with only a 26.6% improvement in mean upload speed when using 5G rather than 4G. The U.S. and Bahrain were nearly tied for most improved with increases of 119.7% and 119.1%, respectively, when comparing mean upload speed on 5G to that on 4G. Switzerland had the fastest mean upload speed over 5G, Qatar was second and Saudi Arabia third. Mean upload speed over 5G was the slowest in the U.K., second slowest in the U.S. and third slowest in Kuwait.

**5G Share of 4G/5G Speedtest^Ⓡ Samples**
June-August 2019
Country	% 5G
South Korea	12.72%
Australia	1.31%
United Arab Emirates	0.65%
Kuwait	0.64%
Switzerland	0.59%
Qatar	0.43%
United Kingdom	0.30%
United States	0.20%
Bahrain	0.09%
Saudi Arabia	0.03%

The 5G share of the tests taken on either 4G or 5G differs widely among the countries on our list. South Korea was clearly on top with 5G accounting for nearly 13% of Speedtest 4G/5G samples. This is not surprising given that one South Korean mobile operator already has 1 million 5G subscribers. Australia had the second largest percentage of 5G tests and the U.A.E. third. Saudi Arabia had the smallest percentage of 5G results.

Ookla^Ⓡ is your go-to resource for ongoing 5G analysis

Ookla will continue to analyze 5G speeds as operators across the globe make this significant improvement in their networks. We’re uniquely capable of measuring 5G speeds because Speedtest uses a client and server testing engine capable of measuring high-speed connections (up to 10 Gbps) that dynamically scales the number of connections to the server in order to saturate and accurately measure the client-side connection. This allows us to measure the full extent of real-world performance and overcome the effects of network bottlenecks such as TCP slow start and means we are unique in our ability to measure 5G.

In addition, Ookla has partnered with operators and device manufacturers all over the world to implement accurate in-app 5G detection — even as Android Pie, which powers the current generation of 5G devices, does not natively identify 5G connection types. Through this approach, we’re able to properly configure the parameters of a Speedtest and measure 5G tests.

Keep watching this space for future analyses or contact us to learn more about how our data can help you.

To get a broader understanding of how 5G is changing the mobile landscape, read our previous coverage here:

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

About the Author

Isla McKetta

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You may have read in Speedtest Global Index that the United Kingdom has the 41st fastest mobile download speed and the 25th fastest fixed broadband speed in the world for the month of August. This is true, but the U.K.’s complex geography makes the story much more nuanced than that. This month we’ve gone beyond the country-level statistics available in the Speedtest Global Index to give you a peek at the deeper story.

Mobile speeds are relatively even

Average mobile speeds across the four countries of the U.K. didn’t actually vary that much during the month of August 2017. Downloads in England are 2.5% faster than the UK as a whole. In Scotland, they are 10.5% slower than the UK average, 6.9% slower in Northern Ireland and 4.8% slower in Wales. But even in Scotland, the download speed is decent. Mobile upload speeds don’t fluctuate, either from England’s 1.7% faster than U.K. average to Wales 8.7% slower than U.K. average.

Mobile Speeds United Kingdom

This does not mean that all mobile internet users in the U.K. connect at these speeds, even on a country-level. In June, Ofcom published a report saying that 56% of rural users in the U.K. were satisfied with their mobile service, compared with 72% of urban users.

Fixed broadband speeds vary… a lot

England’s mean download and upload speeds over fixed broadband are on par with those in the U.K. as a whole, but that’s where the story of relatively comparable internet speeds across the U.K. breaks down.

Scotland’s fixed broadband speed is a whopping 36.8% faster than the U.K. average. Download speeds in Wales and Northern Ireland, on the other hand, are 35.6% and 46.3% slower than the U.K. average. Northern Ireland’s average is slower than Ofcom’s 30 Mbps superfast designation and Wales’s average is not much better. Upload speeds in these two areas are 21.5% and 29.0% slower, respectively, than the U.K. average.

Fixed Mean Speeds United Kingdom

About those slow areas…

The government of Wales has been working on project Superfast Cymru to bring “access to high speed broadband to the majority of homes and businesses in Wales that cannot get it through the private sector’s own commercial programmes.” And the BBC reported in March 2017 that “Speeds of 24Mbps plus are now available in about nine out of every 10 homes and businesses in Wales.”

Northern Ireland has undertaken a similar endeavor with the Superfast Rollout Project and in December 2016, Ofcom’s Northern Ireland director wrote that superfast broadband was available to eight in 10 homes in Northern Ireland.

But these projects have been rolling out for awhile, and while nearly 650,000 Welsh premises newly had access courtesy of Superfast Cymru, download speeds in Wales only increased 12.8% over the last year. The Northern Ireland Broadband Improvement Project has been under way since February 2014 and the past year saw an increase of only 15.2% in download speeds. These compare with increases of 33.3% in England and 63.5% in Scotland during the same period.

So why are internet speeds still so different?

Subscription rates

Access does not mean that people are subscribing to higher tier plans. For example, the House of Commons library reported that seven out of ten of the slowest council wards in the U.K. were in Wales. This is borne out when we look at median speeds rather than mean speeds:

MedianFixed Speeds United Kingdom
Because the median speeds are the most frequently occurring speeds, these numbers more accurately reflect what people are subscribing to, not what they could achieve in a given location.

Rural population

Extending fiber to rural areas can be expensive and not all providers are willing to invest in areas with smaller populations where the rate of return is likely to be lower.

Looking at rural population statistics from across the U.K., this could be one reason why service is slower in Northern Ireland and Wales. In Northern Ireland, 33.2% of people lived in areas with a population of 3,000 or less. Compare that with Scotland’s 18% or England where 17.6% of people lived in areas of 10,000 or less. In Wales that number is closer to 32%. Urban vs. rural designations in Wales are a bit more tricky, but the Government of Wales considers a combination of areas designated as “less sparse rural” and three subsets of “sparsest” areas to be rural; that combination of areas houses 20.5% of the Welsh population.

These numbers don’t necessarily mean that higher percentages of rural population leads to slower fixed broadband speeds, but there is a correlation.

Whatever the cause of the wide difference in fixed broadband speeds across countries of the U.K., it’s clear that Wales and Northern Ireland still have a lot of catching up to do, particularly if they want to take full advantage of the digital economy.