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Mobile Networks around the world

TTJJ

ULTIMATE Member
Just started this thread out of curiosity of how mobile networks fare around the world.

I've been working from China for quite a while and we've had 5G for quite some time now, blanket coverage essentially everywhere and it's been 5G SA from the start. Every time I come 'home' the state of the networks at home is fairly annoying. Patchy coverage etc, so I was wondering how it is around the world wherever you are.

Here are my Speedtest results for China Telecom and China Unicom. Depending on location it can get to well over 1000mbps, but that's generally in indoor locations and you can see the small router sized 5G boxes on the walls/ceiling inside shopping centres and metro stations etc.

and in case you're wondering about the cost, Telecom is about £3/month for 80GB, Unicom is £4/month for 20GB and then charges 10p/GB above that.

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I’m on 3 and where I am, speed is around 600-1.2Gbps download and 100mbps upload, so I’d say no difference really from what you’ve tested.
 
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The difference with China is that there are very limited planning laws, and because state owned utilities have a relatively easy path to get their infrastructure where they need it with minimal fuss, rooftop antennas and leaky feeders on and in buildings are made to happen, they backfill with overlay WiFi on street furniture in urban areas. It's a completely different regulatory environment.

Over in blighty (and the west in general) to do anything to improve coverage it usually involves building/land owners and their insurers want realms of documents, risk assessments, getting power is another effort, getting permissions from planning is another effort with objections, wayleave agreements, and then to top it off a pigeon builds their nest and its all on hold for weeks or months.

Whilst there are drawbacks with the way things are governed in China, this is one where their system excels as everyone is generally working towards (or will be told to) moving forward and improving things, albeit at some personal impact to some who are impacted. I am not advocating either way, just sharing my understanding of how things work over there.

Although not to same level of coordination you can see similar concepts in many Asian countries where utilities do not have barrier after barrier put in their way.
 
There’s a huge difference
1. That coverage is everywhere, not 1gbps one second and 1kbps the next
2. It’s much cheaper
3. Its SA, not NSA

Okay, I’m merely comparing one speed and my personal experience against another. I’m sure there are huge differences elsewhere.
 
@TTJJ have a look at my thread from last year testing EE 5G.

Connectivity in EU countries for the most part seems better due to "better" planning laws, also Europe has many more "blocks" than houses, so it's very easy to put up infrastructure.


 
Impressive 5G speeds from China.

With this said, both networks are state owned and they had what's essentially unlimited money to build their NR network. With the exception of countries like UAE or Saudi Arabia, I don't see how can anyone else do the same.

When we build a train line, it needs to be used and profitable. When a council builds housing, it needs to be occupied by someone. When a network thinks about upgrading a town to fast 5G, they need to see if they can justify the investment. China just does it and deals with the consequences later. We can't do the same.
 
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Just to give you an idea of scale of stuff you can find in China, in addition to having good 4G (now 5G) the networks also had a massive street level WiFi infrastructure, a massive mesh with each network having their box on each 2nd or 3rd street lamp column. This is frequently extended into public buildings, subways, trains, buses and even onto highways and intercity motorways in some areas, so you can be tanking down a motorway at 120kmph in the middle of nowhere and still have both WiFi and 4G. Settings are included with your SIM for you to exploit the WiFi backhaul with no additional user intervention required.

Of course this also means that those who want to know can use data gleaned from these networks to keep tabs on where everyone's devices are most of the time and it also makes network connections for the equally impressive everywhere CCTV with the latest cameras that include facial recognition equally simple. So be careful what you wish for.
 
As an EU expat living in the UK I am traveling 2-3 times to EU both by car and by plane. At my home in the UK I am in eye visibility of O2 mast offering 5G NSA where I am getting up to 120Mbps down and up to 40-50Mbps up. I've been testing that both using speedtest.net and iperf. As a professional bias ;) I am testing O2 while in roaming. So for example recently in Eindhoven in NL I was able to get 250/50Mbps, In Antwerp in BE 380/10Mbps but I was moving in the car. I don't remember how fast was it in Germany but in Gdynia in Poland I am getting up to 50-180 down and 10-60 up in 5G and up to 280/25Mbps in 4G+ depending on operator.
 
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