Londoners experience a poorer quality of experience on 5G mobile networks than residents of other UK cities and the gap appears to be widening, according to new data published this week.
Operators in the UK capital have experienced a set of challenges when rolling out 5G that are not unique to the city, but are particularly pronounced there: the impact of building regulations on indoor coverage; issues with leasing rooftop space for network densification; and the use of 3.5 GHz spectrum.
Taken together, these issues pose a serious hurdle to decent 5G experiences for London residents, and their impact is clearly visible in Ookla's latest market analysis.
London ranks last of the 11 major UK cities measured by Ookla in the first quarter of the year across a number of key 5G performance indicators and the gap between it and top-performing city Glasgow is widening. It struggled on 5G network consistency, which Ookla describes as "a key indicator of performance at the lower end of the user experience," and lagged in terms of median download and upload speeds.
