Survey Claims UK 5G Mobile Users are Satisfied with Performance
A new OnePoll survey of 1,000 UK adults, which was commissioned by Green Smartphones and focused on those who reported using 5G to get online via their mobile phones, has claimed that 80% of people are satisfied with the broadband speeds and coverage offered by their 5G service (9% were dissatisfied, while 12% were undecided).
The survey also asked respondents how much faster, or slower, 5G is on their mobile phone when compared to their expectations. Overall, 53% said the service was about what they expected, while 21% said it was faster than expected, 12% said it was “much faster” than expected, another 12% said it was “slower than expected” and just 2% said it was “much slower” than expected.
In summary, the majority of UK respondents are satisfied with the performance of 5G and very few people say that their 5G service is slower than they expected. This is in stark contrast to some recent news reports, which have criticised 5G services and the related rollout as being a disappointment.
In fairness, 5G technology, much like 3G and 4G services before it, have often suffered from an excessive hype train that tended to over-sell its impacts. At the end of the day, 5G has NOT made fixed line broadband connections obsolete and nor has it truly revolutionised medicine, driverless cars or enabled the second coming of Christ. But it has been a useful upgrade of mobile capability that many consumers and businesses do appreciate, once it’s available.
As a wireless network technology, 5G also still has plenty of room to grow and improve (e.g. Standalone 5G), thus we expect to continue seeing improvements in broadband speed and network coverage over the next few years. People will welcome that. But it won’t be long before the hype train switches its focus to 6G, and accompanying that will be all those traditionally ludicrous claims about inflated economic benefits and sci-fi style capabilities.. again.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Depends on expectations and reference point. In O2 in 5G (NSA) I am getting 60-120Mbps down / 15-40Mbps up in my place and almost nothing in 4G. Same O2 in EU roaming and I am getting 200-250Mbps down in 4G+ Considering this I am not satisfied.
O2 has always been garbage, try switching.
wonder if the government subcontracted green smartphones to do the poll?
Doubt it. Green Smartphones are a late-to-the-party price comparison website, and a survey that generates any clickbait headline is perfect for drumming up interest. If they’d said “mobile customers moan about patchy coverage”, who would bother to debate that, or wonder who sponsored and why.
5G for me has been a game changer. Especially when I’m at events with thousands of people. I actually still get fast internet (In the hundreds) rather than absolutely nothing.
This. At London Bridge on Three, 4G has 4 bars and no data flowing at all at rush hour (*).
5G has a good connection – no idea what speed – but enough to connect and surf the web.
(*) e.g. when the trains are cancelled again, and I want to check alternative routes.
For me as well. My choices are 60 megabit openreach DSL or 850 megabit 5G. Plus I can take the 5G with me when we go camping or holidays in airbnbs etc.
Why does no one ever survey me?
I got 5G on a w/e trip to Brighton a couple of weeks ago. It was generally worse than 4G in terms of download.
Of course, we are talking O2 as a carrier for my MNVO. Guess what my answers would have been.
Thats a different matter, who are those people being surveyed, when and where.
Wow, a thousand people, while I am convincedm got to go and get myself a 5G phone to get that extra speed and reliability these people have said about.
Umm, I wonder if any of them live around here?
Statistics not your strong point, then.
1000 people out of the entire UK population, including the under 18s that would not have been asked the question, gives a 3% margin of error within a 95% confidence interval.
Google will fill you in on what a confidence interval is.
@XGS Is On, I know what a confidence interval is and I also know that statistics have been wrong before. so I take statistics with a pinch of salt these days.
Managed to get over 1.3Gbps near a 3 mast (using 3 network), couldn’t run a second test as it chewed through most of my data, while upload was ~175Mbps, ~20 ping.
Impressive that mobile is now starting to outpace 1GB FTTP in some areas.
While the same Three can’t cope with voice call in another place like Stansted airport or bonfire gatherings.
10baseT if you say so. Three works perfectly for me. Voice and data. So many people hating on three. I wonder if they are employed by Vodafone hah
I can assure you that I am not working for any of them and never worked. I am a former Three customer having ongoing issues at that time. Maybe it improved since then but lack of roaming prevents me from doing a business with them.
The speeds definitely an improvement, but the consistency is the biggest issue. At times, it’ll be lightning fast, other times at a standstill.
Exactly I don’t need 1Gbps at 2AM in the middle of nowhere, I need stable 20Mbps during the peak in the town centre.
These ‘surveys’ remind me of when you had to go in town as part of school projects & had to ask random strangers questions for a survey but no one stopped to talk, so you just filled in the survey yourself lol
The government did a survey and found the public are satisfied with their performance.
UK have worst mobile connectivity. The reason may be because 5G is delivered over 4G infrastructure. Just now Vodafone will lunch on coronation day it’s 5G SA (Standalone) line, and just it will be a truly 5G Network, but perhaps it will be locally and probably in London for begining.
10 years ago ago was happen to be at a hostel in the same time with some telecommunications technicians which was installing antennas for EE network, and how they was talking I understand the company opted in for some low performance equipment compared with other European countries, so I’m not surprised now somehow this country have worst connectivity than other European countries.
Sure, if you stand next to a cell tower or in the middle of a park, the speeds are great but as soon as you move indoors, cell reception turns to dawgshit! This is mainly due to the operators unwilling/unable to utilize low frequency bands (ie. 800 MHz) which offer much better building penetration than the commonly used 2-3 GHz.
Apologies for joining the conversation late, but I hope my input is still useful. I concur with the majority opinion that 5G performance in the UK has been subpar compared to many other countries including Asia, where high-speed connectivity is widely available. However, there are promising developments on the horizon. According to ofcom, the 3G network will soon be decommissioned, freeing up bandwidth that could potentially be used to enhance the speed and reception of 5G.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/advice/3g-switch-off