The US already behind on 5G, per reporting in Venture beat. The performance gap between US and international 5G deployments is growing. OpenSignal has published a report detailing the average 5G speeds around the world. Quoting VentureBeat:
South Korean users seeing 5.3 times faster average 5G speeds than 4G — 312.7Mbps — followed by Australia (215.7Mbps), Taiwan (210.2Mbps), and Canada (178.1Mbps). Saudi Arabia’s 5G gap is even more pronounced at 14.3 times the speed of 4G (averaging 414.2Mbps), but in the United States the difference is a mere 1.8 times, and slow in both cases: 28.9Mbps for 4G versus 50.9Mbps for 5G. Average U.S. 5G performance was actually slower than in the Opensignal study published in May, while other countries have increased their download speeds.
This performance is due to several carrier decisions – and likely to be addressed in 2021 and 2022. That said, this isn’t the first time the US has lagged, and the country has not caught up.
Why do we care?
Broadband accessibility is becoming a significant issue – we’ve already seen problems with the rollout of virtual and distance learning because of bandwidth availability across economic lines, and here we see that the US is falling behind on the rollout too.
5G has been touted as the “next thing” and a massive emerging technology to leverage… but if the promise is never delivered upon, or delivered upon so slowly, it delays all the potential.
Services providers should be concerned – and call out this discrepancy. If not corrected, it’s holding back of all the potential of this technology and offering significantly less opportunity in the US marketplace. You can’t leverage the promise if it’s not in the field, and other markets are already significantly ahead of the American one.
Source: Venture Beat