RootMetrics Show UK 5G Mobile Broadband Speeds in London UPDATE

RootMetrics has just published their third report into the tentative early availability and mobile broadband performance of UK 5G Mobile networks, which this time focuses upon the UK capital city of London. As before EE came top for both average download speeds (149.2Mbps) and network availability (60.6%).

As with the earlier reports – for Birmingham and Cardiff – there are some big caveats to the data. The testing was conducted between 7th and 15th October 2019 (i.e. before Three UK and O2 had properly launched their 5G mobile networks in the city), which means that only EE and Vodafone are included (note: EE has had more time to rollout and thus at this stage comparing availability is only of limited use).

The testing in London was only based on the team having driven 132 miles, including tests via 28 indoor locations and 12,502 total tests conducted via both a OnePlus 7 Pro 5G (EE) and Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G (Vodafone) smartphone. The fact that they used a different phone for each network also opens up the possibility of differences due to end-user hardware or antenna design etc.

RootMetrics informed us that, in terms of their choice of phone, the goal is to assure that testing is reflective of the best possible end-user experience on each operator’s network. “To that end, we go through an extensive device benchmark process to determine which phone works best for each network rather than using the same device across all operators by default,” said a spokesperson. In this case, the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G was the best device for testing EE, while the Xiaomi device was the best device for Vodafone.

The 5G Results for London

Before we get started it’s worth highlighting the results that RootMetrics received for existing non-5G networks. In terms of existing 4G/3G networks, EE delivered a median download speed of 43.6Mbps, while Vodafone produced 33.9Mbps, O2 hit 16.8Mbps and Three UK came last with a surprisingly weak 5.7Mbps.

Sadly there are no results for upload or latency performance. Nevertheless it’s clear that initial 5G networks are able to deliver at least more than double the performance of prior 4G networks, which is better than it sounds given how 4G has access to multiple bands via Carrier Aggregation and 5G does not.. yet (Ofcom will release more bands in 2020).

A separate report from Opensignal, using different methodology, has already given us an indication of just how fast we can expect 5G networks to go once they have access to the best spectrum in the near future (here). The results above for London also appear to be roughly similar to a recent report from GWS, which also examined 5G in the capital (here).

UPDATE 4:21pm

RootMetrics has informed us that they recorded much faster latency times on 5G compared to non-5G mode for both EE and Vodafone in London. Latency times while on 5G were in the mid-30s (ms) for both operators, while non-5G latency times were between 60-80ms (we assume the non-5G latency times are being dragged down by 3G since in our experience 4G is usually averaging around 40-50ms).