5G provides 20% higher satisfaction rate than 4G for event goers

In 2024 several major European events coincided with a focused buildout of 5G infrastructure, says Ericsson, which ’provided a real-world testing ground for 5G's capabilities in delivering enhanced connectivity experiences in the most challenging traffic environments.’

The firm has published a polled which sampled some of the 14 million people who attended big events this year, like Taylor Swift’s world tour and the Paris Olympics, and said two out of three 5G users reported their expectations for connectivity ’were met or exceeded’, with 5G having 20% more satisfied users than 4G.

At the Taylor Swift concerts, attendees consumed an average of 5.4 TB of data per night we’re told, while during the Olympics, daily uplink data traffic in central Paris increased by 20%, with uplink traffic also tripling during the opening ceremony. ”Relying solely on 4G to support this upload traffic would have resulted in overloaded networks and significant connectivity failures,” says the kit vendor.

The study also found that consumers are willing to pay a premium for ’guaranteed, seamless connectivity’ to improve their experience during events. Given the option to receive this as part of their event ticket, eventgoers are willing to pay up to 15% more for the pleasure, says Ericsson, and 5G standalone would allow operators to do to this by allowing them to cordon off part of their network to provide bandwidth for specific users or apps.

"This study clearly shows that the enhanced experiences 5G provides are driving greater satisfaction,” said Jasmeet Sethi, Head of ConsumerLab at Ericsson. ”While network speed is important, it's not the most important factor—our findings show that user satisfaction is driven more by the consistency and quality of app performance.

”As previous ConsumerLab studies have already shown, poor experience can have a lasting impact on customer loyalty, and these results underline that users are willing to pay more for guaranteed service quality. This means that, with 5G standalone, operators have a significant opportunity to meet rising user expectations and capitalize on premium services for consumers seeking assured quality of experience."

Anne Flore Roger, Technical Director, Mobile Network at Orange was drafted in to say: "Customer experience is at the heart of our strategy. During this year’s global sporting event in Paris, we witnessed unprecedented traffic levels. To accommodate the anticipated 11 million attendees arriving in the city, we deployed numerous temporary mobile sites powered by 5G, which handled 25% of the total traffic—a remarkable figure.

”Key hot spots were also critical, with just six venues managing 50% of the total load. The opening ceremony alone saw traffic surge to three times the volume of a typical busy day, with 5G supporting half of that demand. It's clear that without 5G, we could not have met the connectivity needs of users at this scale."

While its handy for Ericsson that if there were more bolstering of networks during big events in the future it would result in kit vendors such as itself being brought in to set up the infrastructure, the prospect of charging a premium for guaranteed connectivity at times where the network is flooded may prove to be of interest to operators who thus far have largely failed to charge more for connectivity services after investing to set up global 5G networks.