Telstra 5G Hits 157Mbps – But US Operator Achieves 506Mbps

SYDNEY/LONDON: Telstra’s 5G service has been rated at an average 157 megabits per second (Mbps) in a UK-based survey of leading 5G nations by UK-based Open Signal.

That’s slightly better than British figures of 122Mbps at Vodafone UK, and 149.8Mbps at EE,  part of the BT group, but below South Korea figures of 215-238mbps – and way, way below the extraordinary 506Mbps figure achieved by market leader Verizon in the USA.

However Open Signal points out that the differences are largely based on the type of 5G spectrum each operator has used. Of the 10 operators studied, Verizon was the only one to exclusively use mmwave spectrum.

Open Signal notes: the speed differences are largely because of the amount of 5G spectrum available to deploy. It notes: “Wider channels are better, ideally 100Mhz in a single 5G band — but it’s also due to other differences in the networks, such as the capacity of the onward connection from each cell site, or the performance of each operator’s core network.”

And it concludes: “While the average 5G speed varies dramatically across these 10 leading 5G operators, in every case the 5G download speed experience is dramatically faster than 4G.”