It’s all over the internet that 5g is better then 4g LTE, but how much better is it in the real world? According to Opensignal’s crowdsourced data, it’s indeed a lot faster, but mainly in the US! They found that peak download speeds on 5G reach just past 1.8Gbps in the States versus 678Mbps for LTE, or about 2.7 times faster. That’s because of the use of millimeter wave spectrum whose ultra-high frequencies (about 30GHz and up) allow such a huge bandwidth boost. Other countries don’t have that, the speeds are much lower. Switzerland and South Korea come the closest at about 1.1Gbps on 5G.
It’s slower due to these markets don’t have millimeter wave access and are relying instead on “mid band” (typically 3.4GHz to 3.8GHz) frequencies to deliver 5g service.