alt Hacker NewsThat's really quite odd. There is even no 5G in my area, yet I get 100 Mbps stable download speed on 4G LTE, outdoors and indoors, any time of the day. Is 5G a downgrade? Is it considered normal service in the UK, when latest generation of cellular network provides a connection speed compared to 3G launched in 2001? How is this even acceptable in the year 2025. Would anyone in the UK start complaining if they downgrade it to 100Kbps? Or should we design the apps for that case?
5G is better, but like any G, networks need to deploy capacity for it to be fast.
I sometimes see +1Gbps with 100MHz of n78 (3500MHz), a frequency that wasn't used for any of the previous Gs, but as you are aware, 5G can also be deployed on low band and while more efficient, it can't do miracles. For example, networks here use 700MHz. A 10MHz slice of 700MHz seems to provide around 75Mbps on 4G and around 80Mbps on 5G under good conditions. It's better, but not a huge improvement.
The problem in my case is a lack of capacity. Not all sites have been upgraded to have faster backhaul or to broadcast the higher, faster frequencies they use for 5G, so I may end up using low band from a site further away... Low frequencies = less capacity to carry data. Have too many users using something with limited capacity and sometimes it will be too slow or not work at all. It's usually the network's fault as they're not upgrading/expanding/investing enough or fast enough... sometimes it's the local authority being difficult and blocking upgrades/new sites (and we also have the "5G = deadly waves" crowd here).
It shouldn't happen, but it does happen[0], and that's we shouldn't assume that a user - even in a developed country - will have signal or good speeds everywhere. Every network has weak spots, coverage inside buildings depends a lot on the materials used, large events can cause networks to slow down, etc. Other than trying to pick a better network, there's not much a user can do.
The less data we use to do something, the better it is for users.
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[0] Here's a 2022 article from BBC's technology editor complaining about her speeds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63798292