Nokia claims latest 5G speed record

The latest company to claim the 5G speed record is Nokia, which chucked out 4.7 Gbps of supercharged data in a test environment.

800 MHz of millimetre wave spectrum were used, to generate the requisite fat pipe. The test was conducted on Nokia’s OTA network in Dallas, US. Apparently this is the gear US operators will be using when they get their 5G act together, but American punters would be well advised to manage their expectations about seeing anything like these speeds.

“This is an important and significant milestone in the development of 5G services in the U.S, particularly at a time when connectivity and capacity is so crucial,” said Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia. “It demonstrates the confidence operators have in our global end-to-end portfolio and the progress we have made to deliver the best possible 5G experiences to customers. We already supply our mmWave radios to all of the major US carriers and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them moving forward.”

Not everyone is convinced, however. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed how false headlines about 5G can easily suck up all the debate, taking the focus away from the benefits of this exciting technology,” said Guillermo Pedraja, Head of Networks, 5G & IoT Consulting at NTT DATA, in an unsolicited email that linked to the Nokia announcement. “Scientific evidence, not baseless rumours, are the way forward to a better and more connected world.”

It should be noted that Samsung recently claimed to have hit 8.5 Gbps, but that was only by adding two streams together. So it seems Pedraja has a point about people taking liberties with the numbers, but having said that we’re not aware of any reason to question Nokia’s claims. At the end of the day, 5G speed records make for easy PR wins, but don’t count for much in the real world.