These days, if you have a 5G phone you’ll probably often find you can connect to a 5G network in the UK, yet 5G availability still trails way behind much of Europe.
A report from Ookla (which collects mobile data from users of its Speedtest site and app), has found that 5G has an availability level of just 45.2% in the UK. In contrast, Denmark tops the list for Europe at 83.9%, so almost double what the UK has.
Only six European countries have worse 5G availability than the UK according to this report, though some are far worse for it, with Belgium being at the bottom with just 11.9% availability.
Still, it’s disappointing to see the UK at below 50% and well below most of the rest of the continent, especially given that it’s not an especially large area, and that the UK was among the first places in the world to start rolling out 5G.
There's better news for 5G Standalone
The report does note that the availability of 5G SA (5G Standalone) is higher in the UK than in a lot of Europe, which is good as this allows for higher speeds than 5G NSA (5G Non-Standalone). But with around a 2.9% sample share, 5G SA is so limited as to almost not be worth mentioning at the moment, and still massively trails some countries, like Spain, which has an 8% 5G SA sample share.
So what’s going on here? Well, there are a number of potential reasons for why the UK is trailing in 5G performance, but the biggest is probably the government’s requirement that all Huawei network infrastructure was replaced, for security reasons.
That made for a slow start, but hopefully there won’t be any more holdups, and the UK’s networks will start catching up with the rest of Europe.
