Ookla report points to ‘network challenges’ ahead of New Year’s Eve

The report reviewed data from New Year’s Eve 2023/24 in order to look at how 5G networks coped with the surge in demand and change in traffic patterns during New Year across various cities.

Network operators allocate more spectral capacity to the downlink, as most mobile use cases lean more heavily on downloading data to the end-user device, we’re told, however the usage profile at the New Year is different and involves more uplink uses such as video sharing, video streaming and calling, as well as uploading content to social media.

Ookla says the data shows a significant gap between upload performance for the median user, and those in the lower 10th percentile, or those experiencing the worst 10% of performance samples.

Half the cities in its analysis recorded 10th percentile upload performance of less than 1 Mbps, with speeds ranging from 0.30 Mbps in Berlin, to 6.09 Mbps in Dubai. These speeds make it nearly impossible to upload photos or videos, claims the report.

“It was a similar picture for New Year revellers based on download speeds and latency,” stated the report. “Despite more capacity being allocated to the downlink, performance for the lowest 10% of samples tumbled significantly compared to the median experience, with cities in APAC (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Sydney and Tokyo) in particular suffering, recording 10th percentile 5G download speeds of less than 10 Mbps. Latency was more of a mixed story across cities.

“At one end of the scale, Tokyo recorded a variance in latency between the median and 90th percentile (the worst 10% of latency samples) of just 19 ms, while Sydney saw a much wider gap of almost 200 ms. At 200 ms of latency users are likely to experience frustratingly slow loading times, unresponsive applications, and poor video quality.”

In September, Ookla released a survey which claimed 27% of UK  respondents reported experiencing a network outage at least once a month, while 11% faced outages multiple times a month. Slow-loading web pages and interrupted video streams were listed as affecting 38% and 19% of users respectively, and 26% of respondents said that they are likely or very likely to switch operators within the next year.