Not All 5G Is Equal: GSA
New research by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) found that by the end of October, a total of 647 operators in 191 countries were investing in 5G, GSA analyst Joe Gardiner said Tuesday during the group's webinar. Some have launched, while others have purchased spectrum for 5G or otherwise are planning to offer the service, he said. GSA also found that 358 operators in 140 countries have launched or soft launched mobile 5G services, and 175 providers in 78 countries have launched fixed wireless access service that's compliant with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project.
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Progress on 5G has been good, but for 5G stand-alone, “maybe not so much,” Gardiner said, with 181 operators in 73 countries investing in stand-alone service but only 85 in 47 countries having actually launched. Some regions, particularly Africa, lagged behind, he said. GSA also found that most consumers were satisfied with the quality of streaming video from their providers, rating it “very good” or better. Mexico, Sri Lanka and Qatar were among the nations that showed a need for improvement, Gardiner added.
Vaishali Purohit, also a GSA analyst, said most consumers rate their 5G gaming experience as "good" or "excellent," with performance improving since earlier this year. No U.S. operators were among those getting the highest scores, she noted. Two of the three lowest-scoring operators were from South Africa, and South Korea received the highest ratings overall.
Sylwia Kechiche, Opensignal's senior director of industry analysis, said not all 5G is the same. For instance, in India, one major operator has deployed a stand-alone network, while a second hasn’t. As more people adopt 5G there, network speeds have decreased, she said.
Opensignal looks closely not just at speed but also at the quality of the experience for consumers, Kechiche added. With 5G, some users still notice that the network is buffering or that they don’t have a very clear voice call. Across most countries, “we see that 5G stand-alone brings in better consistency of experience.” In most markets, consumers aren’t seeing “the near-zero latency that was promised with the introduction of 5G,” though the service is still in “very early days."