London
reportedly offers the lowest quality of 5G connectivity compared to other cities in Europe. According to a report by fixed and mobile network benchmarking firm MedUX, findings have revealed that out of a group of 10 cities in Europe, including
Barcelona
, Paris and Lisbon, London ranked tenth for 5G quality of experience while
Berlin
took the top position.
The report was prepared using robots to properly assess fixed and mobile wireless internet broadband as well as identify and resolve network issues. The report also includes contributions from telecom providers, regulators and enterprises that benchmark and monitor networks.
Berlin offers ‘best’ 5G connectivity, London the ‘worst’
With a 89.6% reach, Berlin has the best 5G coverage of any European city, the report notes. It is also the best city for 5G streaming, with average latency of less than 40 milliseconds.
In an interview with CNBC, Rafael Galarreta, chief marketing officer of MedUX said: “They are very good at doing things properly. They are the best in particular worlds.”
He also highlighted Berlin’s prowess in video streaming and data for over-the-top (OTT) media services.
Berlin, Barcelona, and Paris scored the highest among
European cities
on the report. These cities overarched the 5G quality benchmark, while Lisbon, Milan and Porto were the runners up.
Meanwhile, London was close to the bottom of the ranking for European 5G networks. Nearly 77.5% of the city’s population has 5G on their devices now, which is below the urban average.
London also performs badly on downlink speeds. The data from the report showed that the city gives users an average download speed of 143 megabits per second (Mbps), compared to 528 Mbps for Lisbon, 446 Mbps for Porto and 326 Mbps for Barcelona.
Apart from London, Munich in Germany was the second-worst city for 5G downlink speeds and had average download speeds of 259 Mbps.
“The UK is struggling for several reasons. We already spoke about the macro things, but the two most important dimensions in which the UK mobile networks are lagging behind is speed and accessibility, and network responsiveness,” Galaretta added.
He also noted that network responsiveness affects latency, which impacts data-intensive apps like online gaming (particularly cloud gaming, which provides constant delivery of games to an end user through a remote data center).
English (US) ·