5G Testing Proves Disappointing In Asian Cities: The first mass testing of 5G networks failed: they are low-power and unstable.
Independent tests conducted in the largest Asian cities showed that significant gaps in the coverage of mobile networks will force users to refrain from mass use of the new standard. Moreover, the 5G network promised in the theory of speed was never reached. This was shown by tests in various mobile applications.
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Meanwhile, a year has passed since the first 5G network, intended for consumers, was launched in South Korea, as well as several months before a similar network appeared in China. But tests conducted by reporters in Hong Kong showed that first users would not be using 5G soon, because even in such a relatively small region, there are large gaps in coverage.
A similar situation occurs in Tokyo, where a new generation network is also launched.
At the same time, all major smartphone manufacturers have already released several lines of devices supporting 5G: Samsung Electronics, Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi Corp. It turns out that for many users the new wireless standard will soon become the default option, and the quality of its work still leaves much to be desired.
The fact is that for the adequate operation of the new communication standard, a high density of towers is needed.
Once companies have built enough 5G base stations, they will seek to recoup their initial costs by offering more add-on bandwidth-intensive add-ons, such as NVIDIA’s GeForce Now streaming game service, which SoftBank Corp, a telecommunications operator, launched in Japan on June 10.
Where possible even without reaching the maximum theoretical speed, 5G will be an impressive impetus for the development of most consumer applications. For example, at a speed of 1 Gbit / s, a user can download a nine-hour audiobook in less than 1 second, according to Fastmetrics, an American Internet service provider.
According to Fastmetrics, even at one tenth of this speed, 100 Mbps, downloading a 45-minute television show takes only 16 seconds.
Journalists conducted control measurements in four Asian cities – Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo and Hong Kong. For tests, they had smartphones that support 5G and applications for measuring speed.
For example, in Seoul, KT, the South Korean operator No. 2, has improved its 5G mobile service since its commercial debut in April 2019, although it still lacks the high-frequency radio waves necessary to achieve a maximum download speed of 20 Gb / s.
SK Telecom, the country’s largest telecommunications operator, achieves a download speed of 1.5 Gb / s inside its headquarters, which drops to 1 Gb / s in the lobby of the same building.
The average 5G data transfer rate in KT is from 800 Mbit / s to 1 Gbit / s, the company said.
