Brits have the lowest mobile download speed among G7 users

New report on mobile experience from Opensignal shows the UK has the lowest average download speed among the G7 countries, and it has barely improved since a year ago.

The user experience measurement company has just published its 2020 report to compare mobile experience in 100 countries across six domains: upload and download speed, video, voice and games experience, and 4G availability. On all parameters the UK has delivered a respectable but not spectacular performance.

In download speed, the UK ranks 36 out of the 100 countries, with an average 22.9 Mbps. This puts the UK on the bottom of the G7 countries. The minor improvement of 1.2 Mbps over last year’s 21.7 Mbps is also the most meagre incremental among the G7 countries. Globally, Canada just manages to edge South Korea to the top spot with 59.6 Mbps, a whopping 17.1 Mbps increase from a year ago. South Korea, which topped last year’s table, has clocked up an average download speed of 59.0 Mbps and sits in second place.

The authors of the report observed that, countries that have launched 5G services typically registered higher download speed and registered bigger increase than those that have not. However, with the exception of South Korea, where 5G penetration is approaching 10% of mobile users, 5G’s lifting impact on average download speeds in other countries is minimal. Surprisingly, among the 5G countries, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway all reported average download speed decrease. The report does not say why, and by the time of writing, Opensignal has not responded to Telecoms.com’s request for explanation. In a separate research published earlier the company compared 5G download speeds in different countries. Saudi Arabia led with 291 Mbps, followed by South Korea at 224 Mbps.

The G7 Comparison

The UK’s 7.5 Mbps average upload speed gives it a mid-table position. Switzerland leads with 16.2 Mbps, followed by South Korea (16.1 Mbps), Norway (15.7 Mbps), and Singapore (15.0 Mbps).

In video streaming experience, by which the company consolidates scores on picture quality, video loading time, stall rate, as well as perceived video experience as reported by mobile video users, the UK sits in the “Very Good” category with a score of 71.7 (out of a total of 100). The “Excellent” category, with scores over 75, has 15 countries, led by the Czech Republic with 79.1.

When it comes to 4G availability, UK mobile users were able to connect to 4G networks 89.2% of the time, up by 4.5% from a year ago, putting the country on position 31 in the table. Japan sits on the top with 98.5% availability closely followed by South Korea at 98.1%.

In games experience, the company measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on mobile networks including latency, packet loss, and jitter. The Netherlands comes top in this category with 85.2 (out of a total of 100), edging the Czech Republic to the second place with a score of 85.1. The UK, with a score of 77.5, ranks among the better ones but is still trailing the best countries by a sizeable margin.

The last category measured in the Opensignal report is voice app experience, by which the company measures the quality of experience of OTT voice services like WhatsApp, Skype, and Facebook Messenger. Again, the score consolidates both technical measurements and perceived experience. South Korea leads the table with 84.0 (out of 100). Japans comes a close second with 83.8. The UK’s 80.6 is among the better scores.

In general, to look at it globally, UK mobile users enjoy a better than average experience across multiple categories. Meanwhile the benefits of 5G have yet to visibly spread more broadly. In the 5G research published by Opensignal, the UK’s 5G smartphones only connect to 5G networks in slightly over 5% of the time.

Update, 3:30pm BST:

Opensignal sent us this answer to our question on why average download speeds in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway went down:

“More users total could cause slower speeds, but more 5G users would mean more users are able to tap into the 5G spectrum capacity, the newer technology, and see the higher typical 5G average speeds that we’ve seen which should pull up the overall country average.”