Mobile networks want to kill WiFi, but it won’t work in China

According to a recent report by OpenSignal Mobile Data Research, the average mobile network speed in 33 countries around the world has exceeded the WiFi connection speed. This trend will be more obvious in the 5G era, which is due to both speed and price factors. But it is not feasible to kill WiFi, at least in China.

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Which countries love mobile networks?

Why do these regions prefer mobile networks over WiFi? According to the data, these 33 countries are mainly located in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. In Australia, Oman and the Czech Republic, mobile Internet speeds are more than 10Mbps faster than WiFi. In Lebanon, mobile network speeds are often 25Mbps faster than WiFi.

Comparison of mobile network and WiFi speed (Image source: OpenSignal)

WiFi is twice as fast as mobile internet

On the other hand, in the UK and Ireland, WiFi is still the fastest way to access the Internet, and the UK WiFi speed is 60% faster than the mobile network.

The countries where average WiFi speeds are more than twice that of mobile data are the United States, Thailand, Israel and Russia. Mainland China's overall WiFi download speed is 23.9Mbps, while mobile network speeds are 13.8Mbps.

The reason for this is simple: countries with faster home broadband are more willing to use WiFi, while countries with more developed mobile networks than home broadband are more willing to use 4G networks.

Faster Home WiFi

Speed ​​and price double advantage

The main factors that influence people's choice of WiFi or mobile network are speed and price. In fact, users should have experienced this in the past two years. The price of mobile network traffic is relatively high, and sometimes they don't even turn on the traffic switch. As long as there is WiFi, they will definitely ask for the WiFi password first.

Mobile plans fight back against WiFi

Now, 4G data packages are very cheap. Some packages even allow you to use as much data as you want, with 10GB or 20GB of data, which you can't use up in a month, and you don't have to worry about watching videos. Unless you are in an extreme area without mobile network coverage, your reliance on WiFi is getting lower and lower. That is, you will only connect to the high-speed WiFi network at home when you are at home.

Mobile networks are faster and cheaper, so people naturally prefer them. But for the current 200M broadband speed at home, mobile networks are still not comparable, and there is no traffic limit, so of course you use WiFi at home!

It doesn’t work in China

Especially in China, it is even more difficult for mobile network to kill WiFi. First ask your friends around you, who uses mobile network exclusively? There is WiFi at work and WiFi at home, that is, mobile network when you go out.

The main reason is that when we usually use mobile networks, the density of devices in the environment is very high, and the fastest 4G downlink rate is only 20-60Mbps. Thanks to the construction of "Broadband China", home broadband now starts at 100 or 200Mbps, and some users even use gigabit broadband. This is far from the speed of mobile networks.

A tie at best

Then a friend asked, in the 5G era, the downlink speed can reach 1000Mbps, so WiFi is doomed, right? According to the instructions of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the three major operators will bring gigabit broadband to households in 2020. The speed of 5G is on par with home WiFi in 2020, and it is impossible to replace it.

No one wants to kill anyone.

It is true that everyone is looking forward to 5G, but WiFi should not be underestimated. Especially after 5G becomes popular, everyone's devices will support 5G, and there will be so many devices connected to the base station that it will be almost impossible to reach the theoretical network speed. WiFi speed will also develop further. The topic of "mobile network killing WiFi" may be applicable to countries and regions with special circumstances, but in China, no one wants to kill anyone else.

Conclusion

Mobile wide area networks and local area networks are competing against each other, and prices are constantly falling, benefiting users.