Phone signal in the UK has seemingly become worse and worse over the last year. 5G slowing to a crawl and 4G / 3G often not working at all even in larger towns and cities.
So why is the UK 5G network so slow?
The most common view is that 5G signals aren’t as far reaching as 4G, so you need more towers to achieve the same coverage.
This even means that apparently rain can hamper the signal quite badly too!
While this is true of the upper bands (think n78 up at 3GHz), 5G is deployable also on low frequencies such as n20 (800MHz), n28 (700MHz) and of course the older 3G and 2G frequencies on n1 (2.1GHz) and n3 (1.8GHz) and doesn’t have the timeslot limitations of GSM (where a cells maximum reach is dependent on the time it takes the signal to travel, not the actual radio power – hence even with the highest available power, the maximum reach at 800/900MHz is 36km). So 5G(SA) deployed on these lower frequencies actually can have better range and performance than GSM or WCDMA.
The issue in the UK is that, while some 5G is deployed on lower frequencies – especially where there is very good 4G coverage, there is virtually no 5GSA services yet, so almost all of the time you are on 5G(NSA) – which actually is 4G with the 5G element simply an SDL (supplimental downlink). As such, the actual speed and range is reliant on the 4G signal despite your phone showing 5G – and 4G is either low frequency (good coverage, but quite slow) or high frequency (fast, but lower coverage).
What all this means in English, is that when you’re connected to 5G currently – your device essentially is listening to a 5G tower and a 4G tower at the same time BUT is absolutely reliant on the 4G tower which may not be as “strong” as a 5G tower.
Similarly, when on 4G – most devices use multiple channels and towers at once to attain good speed and signal quality – so you might be on B1, B3 and B20 at the same time. When you’re using 5G, the radio in your device can’t use as many 4G channels as it’s now listening to a 5G tower as well as a 4G one – so you’ll be connected to, say, B20/28 on 4G and n78 on 5G. As your device is reliant on the B20/28 4G signal to actually work at all, the general performance will be limited by the 4G element.
So – tl;dr – there are many places where using 4G only will actually outperform 5G-NSA at the moment, however when 5G-SA is deployed and your device won’t need the 4G element, it will perform much better.
Currently, if you’re on O2 or EE especially, it’s the worst of both worlds. The 5G is there, but patchy and deployed on too lower frequency to provide massive speed – but increases coverage for now – and of course while you’re using that, you loose some carrier aggregation on 4G making the latency and uplink speeds considerably slower than you’d see on 4G only.
Things will slowly improve though as stuff is refarmed – but it’s a painfully slow process here in the UK – but most of the kit to do this at the MSC and eNBs is “ready”.
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