The first batch of commercial 5G countries' network speeds: several blocks faster than Wi-Fi

There have been voices saying that the large-scale commercial use of 5G will accelerate the elimination of Wi-Fi. Judging from the actual speed alone, this seems to be the case.

Data from Opensignal shows that in seven of the eight countries where the next-generation mobile technology has been maturely deployed, 5G networks have significantly faster downlink data rates than Wi-Fi. Saudi Arabia has the fastest 5G speeds, with a typical download speed of 291.2Mb/s, compared to 21.4Mb/s for Wi-Fi, followed by South Korea, Switzerland, Kuwait, Australia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

In most countries, initial 5G networks are deployed in high-capacity mid-band frequencies, typically the 3.5 GHz band, also known as the “C-band.”

In terms of mobile technology, 5G’s download speed advantage over 4G ranged from 11.9 times in Saudi Arabia to nearly 2 times in the U.S. In South Korea, although 4G speeds were the fastest among the eight markets, the average 5G speed was still more than 4 times faster than 4G.

The findings suggest not to let the COVID-19 crisis delay the rollout of 5G, as the greater capacity and faster speeds brought by the technology will be crucial to keeping people connected with growing network usage.