Recent analytics from Frog portfolio company Opensignal show that the average download speed of 5G smartphone owners is 111.8 Mbps or 48% faster than users with comparable recent 4G flagship smartphones and 134% higher than other 4G smartphone users. This data comes from South Korea, the first country to see widespread 5G adoption. These metrics will likely improve as 5G becomes more mainstream and the early 5G technology matures over the coming months. This early 5G launch should extend Korea’s leading global position as the speeds experienced in Korean cities were already fast on 4G.
According to Opensignal, the Korean 5G launch is important for every country launching or planning to deploy 5G because Korea is the first large-scale 5G smartphone launch anywhere globally. In Korea, all three operators launched with a flagship device from the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, Samsung, across all the largest cities. By contrast, the first U.S. smartphone-based 5G service launched with a smaller scope in just two cities using an add-on 5G module handset from a small manufacturer.
There are lessons from initial 5G markets like Korea for later deployments because 5G is so new and different, and because the technology is still immature. With such an early technology, only real-world measurements can provide a continuous ongoing measure of how the 5G experience is changing. You can read more from Opensignal’s detailed analysis of their data here.
