There has been talk that the widespread commercialization of 5G will be an accelerated phasing out of Wi-Fi, which seems to be the case at practical speeds alone.
Data shows that in seven of the eight countries where next-generation mobile technology has been fully deployed, 5G networks have much faster downlink data rates than Wi-Fi. Saudi Arabia is the fastest, with typical download speeds of 291.2Mb/s and Wi-Fi at 21.4Mb/s, followed by South Korea, Switzerland, Kuwait, Australia, Spain and the United Kingdom.
In most countries, the first 5G networks will be deployed in the high-capacity mid-band, usually 3.5GHz, known as the "C-band".
In mobile technology, 5G's download speed advantage over 4G ranges from 11.9 times that of Saudi Arabia to nearly 2 times that of the United States. In South Korea, average 5G speeds are still more than four times faster than 4G, although 4G speeds are the fastest in the eight markets.
The findings suggest that the covid-19 virus crisis should not be allowed to delay the rollout of 5G, as the greater capacity and faster speed the technology brings are critical to keeping people connected to growing network use.
