South Korea 1st 'Country to Deploy Proper 5G,' Speed Measurement Executive Says
South Korea "is the first country to deploy proper 5G where you can really have it in many places,” unlike the U.S., where it’s still “very spotty,” said Greg Kustudia, Opensignal vice president-sales, Americas. Company research found 5G download speeds…
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in Korea averaging 111.8 Mbps, 48 percent faster than users get with comparable 4G flagship phones and 134 percent faster than other 4G phones, blogged Ian Fogg, vice president-analysis. In the U.S., 5G peak downloads reached 1.2 Gbps, Fogg said Thursday, based on measurements from Verizon's network. The max in South Korea was 988 Mbps, 8.8 times as fast as user’s average real-world speeds of 111.8 Mbps. The U.S. has top speeds now because carriers here are using mmWave spectrum vs. the mid-band spectrum Korea uses, meaning Korea has a broader signal range but lower speeds, Fogg emailed us Friday. As vendors fix 5G “teething issues” and refine solutions, peak and average speeds will improve, he said. Some bands aren’t available in certain markets yet -- 3.5 GHz in the U.S. and mmWave in Europe, for example -- but “they will be over the next couple of years and learnings from other countries will help carriers improve these later 5G rollouts,” he said. The video experience promised for fifth-generation phones will be particularly important to measure for customers, a spokesperson said: “Is it buffering, what kind of video experience are you actually getting?” The company's app tries to turn “speeds and feeds” in the mobile “arms race” into metrics that nontechnical people can easily understand, said James Hayman, assistant vice president sales-North America. Opensignal used Pepcom's Digital Experience technology showcase in New York Thursday to demonstrate its mobile "analytics" app and to set expectations about 5G networks. Also last week, Sprint unveiled its third 5G phone (see 1906210062).