UK Ranks Poorly in Ookla’s European Study of 5G Mobile Availability

Broadband network benchmarking firm Ookla, which collects data from consumers via their popular internet Speedtest.net website and App, has published the results of a new Q2 2025 study that ranks European countries by their level of 5G mobile network availability. But the UK somewhat unsurprisingly comes in near the bottom with an availability level of 45.2%.

The worst performing European country in the ranking was Belgium, which sits on a truly abysmal 5G availability score of just 11.9%, while the top country is Denmark on 83.9%. But the UK’s position remains particularly poor when you consider that we were one of the first countries in the world to start deploying the technology. We’ve previously explored some of the reasons for why it all went wrong in another recent article (here).

However, it’s not all bad news. Several key European economies, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, are said to be “achieving stronger progress” in 5G SA (Standalone) deployments than their overall 5G Availability figures, which are heavily skewed by Non-Standalone networks, might indicate.

The majority of 5G mobile networks today are still Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they are partly reliant upon older and slower 4G infrastructure. But SA networks are pure end-to-end 5G that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, support for 5G Voice and increased reliability and security etc.

For example, the UK’s Wireless Infrastructure Strategy previously set out a national ambition to achieve 5G SA coverage in all populated areas by 2030, while the VodafoneThree merger aims (here) to reach 99.95% UK population coverage of their 5G SA network by 2034 (71% by the end of the first post-merger year).