5G Networks Are Performing Worse. What’s Going On?

By now, the cellular industry’s rollout of 5G networks is three or four years old. 5G networks are continuing to deliver better and faster service than 4G in general. Compared with the 5G service from 2022, however, the networks’ upload and download times have generally declined around the world, according to speed-test data from the network diagnostics company Ookla. Even the most robust 5G networks are barely cracking 1 gigabit per second. Part of the problem is the same problem had by every cellular generation. These are the normal growing pains as more customers buy new phones and other devices that can tap into these networks. “You look to 4G and we had the same,” says Mark Giles, an industry analyst at Ookla. “So with initial deployments of 4G, there was a lot of capacity to soak up those early users. And then as more and more users come on, that capacity gets used up, and you need to look at densification.” Giles points out that most network operators began their 5G rollouts by deploying non-standalone 5G networks, where a 5G network is built on top of the existing 4G network’s core infrastructure. This strategy has hampered 5G deployments because operators are limited to building 5G networks wherever they have existing cell towers and other infrastructure. There are also regulatory and permitting problems that operators are running up against in dense cities. Outside of cities, different problems are taking root. As more people in more places start using 5G networks, there’s some degradation in network performance to be expected, in the aggregate.