Advanced Television

Data: Significant gaps in UK 5G performance

July 8, 2025

MedUX, a specialist in mobile network testing, has released its European Crowdsourcing Report, offering critical insights into 5G quality and experience across the continent.

This solution, deployed in over 100 countries and capturing insights from over 50 million smartphone users, provides a real-time view of the actual 5G experience, highlighting the gap between aspirations and reality. With its Quality of Experience (QoE) crowdsourced data set, this report further reaffirms previous findings from MedUX’s 2024 and subsequent 2025 European rankings where London’s 5G QoE was last when compared to other major European cities.

The UK’s Digital Strategy sets a bold vision for near ubiquitous Gigabit coverage by 2030. However, the MedUX report findings reveal a significant gap between these aspirations and the current reality of end-user experience. The report underscores that official 5G coverage figures often don’t reflect the true user experience. On average, European users, including those in the UK, remain connected to 5G approximately 48 per cent of the time, revealing a significant disparity between theoretical population coverage and the daily reality for millions of Brits.

The UK’s 5G performance in a European context

While 5G deployment is widespread, true high-quality 5G is not universal. Only a few countries, notably the Netherlands is seeing 5G emerge as a predominant access technology with above 73 per cent of 5G technology usage, a trend driven by advanced network deployments and accelerated 5G adoption. The Netherlands, along with Switzerland and Denmark, frequently appear at the top for high-quality user experiences.

The report highlights that the UK has below average 5G availability (34 per cent), in general terms but also when it comes to the Upper Mid-Band (3.4-3.7 GHz Band) and to Stand-Alone deployments (23 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively). The UK also faces specific challenges in delivering a consistently high Quality of Experience. Particularly in areas like streaming, social media and gaming, the UK has room for improvement to match the continent’s leaders.

For instance, the UK is not only among the Lagging 5G Countries (worst performers) in Download Speed, Upload Speed, Latency and Packet Loss. Brits also struggle with higher-than-average streaming stalling ratios (.45 ratio) compared to some other European countries, indicating potential instability. The only other country to experience a higher rate of stalling is Romania (.66 ratio). In gaming, the UK shows one of the worst experiences with the highest average jitter (33.48ms) in all of Europe, which can significantly disrupt real-time gameplay.

While the UK’s social media performance is a bit more competitive, it is still among the worst (40 per cent) and lags top performers like Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Luxembourg. The report also provides valuable data for more than twenty European nations, including France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Greece or Finland, identifying areas for improvement across the board.

Actionable insights for a better-connected future

“Our report reveals not just performance disparities but also provides the tools to understand why, and how to improve the customer experience,” commented Rafael González, SVP EMEA at MedUX. “It offers an honest, transparent view of connectivity, enabling stakeholders to evolve networks and meet rising expectations.”

“This massive, real-time measurement of 5G Quality of Experience is a reality,” added Luis Molina, CEO of MedUX. “We are committed to helping countries like the UK enhance their 5G experience for consumers by providing crucial insights to transform basic connectivity into an impactful tool for long-term societal development.”

Categories: 5G, Articles, Mobile, Research

Tags: , ,