What Is Acceptable Upload and Download Speeds for Lte
How fast are 4G and 5G?
You'd have to be living in a cave to not know 4G was faster than 3G, but simply how much faster is it actually? And what nearly 5G?
4G offers maximum real-world download speeds up to around 100Mbps, making information technology over 20 times faster than 3G.
Theoretical maximum 4G speeds are significantly college at 300Mbps, although such speeds are simply achievable in controlled laboratory environments.
5G is far faster still. We'll get into exactly how fast below, along with everything else you need to know about 4G and 5G speeds.
Theoretical speeds by network technology
To understand just how fast 4G is, we need to put the technology into perspective against the older mobile network technologies, namely 3G and 3G HSPA+. To do so we'll look at the theoretical and real-world operation of 4G LTE, every bit well as looking at 4G speeds on the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's mobile networks. We'll also exercise the same for 5G, which is another jump up in speed.
When it comes to measuring mobile network speeds there are 2 situations which are of interest, theoretical and the real world.
Theoretical speeds are those which yous can look to obtain in a laboratory environment with perfect conditions, while real world speeds are those you can expect to get everyday using your phone on a existent mobile network.
To benchmark network speeds, we are interested in download and upload speeds.
Download speeds are the rate at which mobile information is transferred from the internet to your phone or other mobile device, for example when downloading a video. While upload speeds are the rate that mobile data is transferred from your phone or other mobile device to the net, for instance when uploading a photo to Facebook.
| Network Type | Download Speed | Upload Speed |
|---|---|---|
| 3G | 7.2Mbps | 2Mbps |
| 3G HSPA+ | 42Mbps | 22Mbps |
| 4G LTE | 150Mbps | 50Mbps |
| 4G LTE-Advanced | 300Mbps | 150Mbps |
| 5G | 10Gbps+ | 1Gbps |
| Network Blazon | Download Speed (Mbps) | Upload Speed (Mbps) |
|---|---|---|
| 3G | 3 | 0.four |
| 3G HSPA+ | 6 | iii |
| 4G LTE | xx | v |
| 4G LTE-Avant-garde | 42 | ten |
| 5G | 200 | 12-20 |
3G is the slowest speed you'll usually be browsing on. It has a typical real-earth download speed of 3Mbps and a theoretical maximum download speed of 7.2Mbps. If yous desire to stream a video via 3G from YouTube for example yous could be waiting up to x seconds for information technology to load. While downloading a 500MB file can accept around 22 minutes at typical speeds, with larger apps, movies and albums taking far longer still.
Basic 3G's upload speed is a lot slower than its download speed, with typical speeds of 0.4Mbps and a theoretical limit of 2Mbps. In practice 3G is generally fine for web browsing and social networks, you'll just take to wait a few seconds for pages to load. It would take 3.5 minutes to upload a 10MB file or image.
3G HSPA+ is an enhanced version of 3G, and it'south the minimum speed y'all'll usually go on a United kingdom network. It offers typical download speeds of 6Mbps and a theoretical maximum of 42Mbps. With typical speeds you tin expect streaming videos to load in around five seconds and medium sized apps to download in i minute plus, whilst the same 500MB file mentioned above would take xi minutes to download.
3G HSPA+ provides upload speeds of around 3Mbps and the theoretical maximum is around 22Mbps. At average speeds a 10MB file or image would take effectually 27 seconds to upload.
4G (4G LTE) offers typical download speeds of around 20Mbps and theoretical ones of 150Mbps. Then for example, you could download a medium sized app in nether 15 seconds or load a YouTube video in under two seconds at typical speeds. The same 500MB file should be downloadable in nether four minutes.
4G appears to boost upload speeds to around 5Mbps on average, though most network tests don't separate standard 4G from LTE-A, which you can read more about below, making information technology difficult to be sure. The aforementioned 10MB file or image would accept just 16 seconds to upload at these speeds. At the very height finish you can wait upload speeds of effectually 50Mbps.
4G LTE-Advanced is a faster version of 4G with typical existent-world download speeds of 42Mbps and theoretical limits of 300Mbps.
EE has launched this service in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, with partial coverage in a number of other United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland cities, under the name 4G+, while Vodafone has rolled it out to London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Nottingham, Bristol and numerous other locations.
Three has also now launched a 4G+ service, with coverage in major cities such every bit London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
In fact, coverage on all these networks is probably far wider than the lists in a higher place, simply they haven't revealed upward to date lists of the places with LTE-Avant-garde.
With LTE-Advanced (too known as 4G+, LTE-A or iv.5G) videos will load without a discernible intermission and a 500MB file will download in under 2 minutes. In fact, it'southward even faster than many abode broadband connections.
4G LTE-Advanced offers average upload speeds of likely around 10Mbps, though as noted above, getting reliable data for LTE-A speeds as singled-out from standard 4G is tricky, and can theoretically attain 150Mbps. At 10Mbps the same 10MB file or image would have just 8 seconds to upload.
5G is the fastest mobile network applied science available and at the time of writing real-world download speeds are averaging around 130-250Mbps, but networks claim peak speeds of 1Gbps or more are already possible, and in future 5G could become far faster nevertheless, in one case the infrastructure and technologies ameliorate.
Using the middle of those average speeds, a 500MB file would be downloaded in 27 seconds. There'south less data on upload speeds, but a 2021 Ookla study suggests they average between effectually 12Mbps and 20Mbps, depending on network. At those speeds the uploading of a 10MB file would take 4-six seconds.
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Latency
Download and upload speeds aren't the only things that have been improved because 4G also has a ameliorate response time than 3G – due to lower "latency". This means that a device connected to a 4G mobile network will get a quicker response to a asking than the same device connected to a 3G mobile network.
The improved latency times, reduced from around 80 milliseconds (3G/3G HSPA+) to around 35-50 milliseconds (4G), based on Opensignal information, may not seem that significant on paper. However, they can make a significant difference when playing online games and streaming live video.
5G reduces latency further. Data from Ookla in 2021 suggested that 5G was offering an average latency of 29-33ms, while a late 2020 study from RootMetrics found that in primal London, 3's 5G latency was only 17ms, and those figures could theoretically get down to as lilliputian equally 1ms on 5G in future.
UK network 4G speeds - which UK network offers the fastest 4G?
There accept been a number of studies conducted to compare 4G speeds on the UK's 4 major networks, but we've picked two of the most telling ones, namely Opensignal'due south October 2020 and April 2020 Mobile Network Experience reports.
| Network | 4G Download/Upload speeds | 4G Latency (ms) |
|---|---|---|
| EE | 36.iv/nine.1Mbps | 36.0 |
| 3 | 22.ii/viii.0Mbps | 48.three |
| Vodafone | 22.4/viii.5Mbps | 39.0 |
| O2 | xviii.2/vi.2Mbps | 38.i |
The data above was collected by Opensignal, and in the case of download and upload speeds comes from an October 2020 report, and in the case of latency comes from April 2020 (as this wasn't included in the October one).
Annotation that there are newer Opensignal reports, but these combine speeds from all network types, so don't give us useful numbers for these purposes.
You can see EE is substantially ahead of rivals when it comes to average 4G download speeds and also the all-time for upload speeds and latency.
Vodafone comes second for download and upload speeds, followed by Iii, and then O2 is in last identify. However, O2 is 2d for latency, followed by Vodafone, and then Three.
What about 5G?
| Network | 5G median download/upload speeds | 5G Latency (ms) |
|---|---|---|
| EE | 151/18.42Mbps | 29 |
| 3 | 231/13.65Mbps | 33 |
| Vodafone | 159/19.69Mbps | 29 |
| O2 | 155/xi.74Mbps | 31 |
There haven't been quite as many studies into real-world 5G speeds at the time of writing, but 2021 data from Ookla found that Three'southward median 5G download speed was the highest at 231Mbps, Vodafone's was 159Mbps, O2'due south was 155Mbps, and EE's was 151Mbps. As for upload speeds, Vodafone'southward median was the highest at nineteen.69Mbps, EE's was 18.42Mbps, Three's was xiii.65Mbps, and O2's was 11.74Mbps.
For latency, EE and Vodafone lead at 29ms, followed by O2 at 31ms, then 3 at 33ms.
Betoken Topic meanwhile points to an boilerplate 5G download speed of 158.7Mbps for Three, 149.9Mbps for EE, 143.6Mbps for Vodafone, and 115.7Mbps for O2, then well-nigh reports propose Three'due south average and median 5G speeds are the best.
One of the highest speeds we've seen though was for EE, which recorded a speed of 753Mbps in Indicate Topic tests.
Determination
EE is yet clearly the fastest 4G network, with average speeds upwardly to twice as fast as the other 3 networks according to tests. Vodafone and Three are at present on a pretty level ground across the Uk in terms of average 4G upload and download speeds, but O2 is notably slightly behind in tests.
Every bit for 5G, it'south early days at that place and networks are likely to offer broadly similar speeds for a while. Three might accept the border, simply we don't have plenty data to be certain at the time of writing. The primary factor initially will be coverage though, and on that front all of the networks are improving quickly.
Source: https://www.4g.co.uk/how-fast-is-4g/
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