As Vodafone already rolled out some first 5G network cells in Madrid, our drivetest team seized the opportunity to take some first measurements of these early 5G deployments.
All over the world, operators are starting to establish 5G mobile networks or extend their existing infrastructures with first 5G cells. These first 5G “islands“ are still too scarce to already factor in 5G measurements in this year‘s benchmarks. But of course, umlaut and connect take a great interest in finding out what early 5G deployments already offer to their users. Therefore we have decided to perform 5G-based measurements in selected countries as a case study.
MEASUREMENT SCENARIOS FOCUSED ON 5G DATA CONNECTIVITY
In Spain, we took a closer look at selected 5G locations of the Vodafone network, conducting drivetests in the metropolitan area of Madrid. This was done with Samsung Galaxy S10 5G devices on two measurement days – on the first day we used the setting “5G preferred“, on the second one we switched the smartphone to “4G preferred“. The measurements concentrated on data connectivity – we did not perform any voice measurements. We then evaluated the results of these data tests based on our 2019 methodology. The focus of these assessments is comparing the performance of 5G with that of 4G.
SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER DATA RATES AND LOWER LATENCY
The findings of these tests confirm what could be expected – but were nonetheless quite impressive: The peak download data rates in 5G mode rose up to 511.5 Mbps. Cross checks performed with LTE phones only achieved 218.3 Mbps at the same locations even with four carrier (4CA) aggregation. Upload data rates also benefited from 5G, but to a lesser extent: The maximum 5G upload speed was determined at 69.6 Mbps as compared to 50.4 Mbps in LTE-only mode.
As has been frequently stated, 5G is not only about high data rates but even more about low latencies. This was also confirmed by our measurements: Pings to several web services showed an average latency of around 47 to 50 ms via LTE. In 5G mode, the same pings decreased to around 20 ms.
Keeping in mind that 5G stands only at its very beginning, these are very impressive results – which indicate a bright and high-performance future for connected mobile services. We very much look forward to keep accompanying this development.
The orange colored spots mark areas where the 5G test systems actually had a 5G connection to the Vodafone network in the inner-city areas of Madrid.
5G download speeds are significantly higher than those of LTE – even with various levels of carrier aggregation.
The latencies or “ping times“ determined in the 5G network are also clearly lower than those measured in 4G mode.