The Guardian says, “the UK’s 5G connection really is crap”
A story by Chris Stokel-Walker, recently published in the Guardian, asserts that “poor network service is the UK’s biggest gripe with mobile phone companies”. The author criticized the UK 5G telecom network based on actual experiences he had; “The 5G mobile internet I had tethered to my laptop kept cutting out with every languorous corner the car took, rendering my work impossible. The truth is that every city, town, village and hamlet is affected – albeit to differing degrees – by the same problem: Britain’s 5G connection is decidedly crap”.
The article mentions that a study conducted by the research firm Opensignal in 2023 found that UK mobile users had the worst average 5G download speeds of all G7 countries. And Japan and the UK are the only countries in that group to have seen performance drop year on year. In the UK, 17% of mobile users report issues with network connections and signal. A recent report by the Social Market Foundation found that British users get access to 5G about 10% of the time, compared with more than 40% in India.
The writer then raises the question, “Why are we so data-poor?” The obvious answer is a decision made by Boris Johnson’s government in July 2020 to uninstall all products made by Huawei, one of the world’s largest telecoms companies, from the country’s 5G network by 2027. At the same time, the government barred the purchase of any new Huawei connectivity kit from the end of 2020.
Cutting out the world’s best-known provider of 5G connectivity hardware was a bold decision – and arguably justified. Its banning did have an impact on Britain’s connectivity by slowing the rollout of reliably fast 5G connections. Other providers, such as Ericsson and Samsung, have been forced to take up the slack, but it hasn’t been enough to plug the gap and build for the future.
“But that isn’t the only explanation for a situation where buying your morning espresso in cities is touch and go because patchy 5G coverage is disrupting card transactions. Experts also say there is a lack of long-term investment: turning down Huawei made things worse, but government inaction had already left us struggling”.
Investment has also been lacking. Advisers to the government estimated in 2022 that getting full 5G across the country by 2030 would require £37bn. Industry could foot about one-third of that bill, but would require the government to step in and pay the rest. They didn’t. And we’re left with the consequences.
Reference: The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/24/uk-5g-connection-really-is-crap-mobile-phones
