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After a rapid deployment worldwide over the past few years, 5G is expected to have reached a mature deployment stage to provide measurable improvement of network performance and user experience over its predecessors. In this study, we aim to assess 5G deployment maturity via three conditions: (1) Does 5G performance remain stable over a long time span? (2) Does 5G provide better performance than its predecessor LTE? (3) Does the technology offer similar performance across diverse geographic areas and cellular operators? We answer this important question by conducting a cross-sectional, year-long measurement study of 5G uplink performance. Leveraging a custom Android App, we collected 5G uplink performance measurements (of critical importance to latency-critical apps) spanning 8 major cities in 7 countries and two different continents. Our measurements show that 5G deployment in major cities appears to have matured, with no major performance improvements observed over a one-year period, but 5G does not provide consistent, superior measurable performance over LTE, especially in terms of latency, and further there exists clear uneven 5G performance across the 8 cities. Our study suggests that, while 5G deployment appears to have stagnated, it is short of delivering its promised performance and user experience gain over its predecessor.
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This content will become publicly available on October 15, 2026
5G Metamorphosis: A Longitudinal Study of 5G Performance from the Beginning
The cellular network has undergone rapid progress since its inception in 1980s. While rapid iteration of newer generations of cellular technology plays a key role in this evolution, the incremental and eventually wide deployment of every new technology generation also plays a vital role in delivering the promised performance improvement. In this work, we conduct the first metamorphosis study of a cellular network generation, 5G, by measuring the user-experienced 5G performance from 5G network’s birth (initial deployment) to maturity (steady state). By analyzing a 4-year 5G performance trace of 2.65M+ Ookla® Speedtest Intelligence® measurements collected in 9 cities in the United States and Europe from January 2020 to December 2023, we unveil the detailed evolution of 5G coverage, throughput, and latency at the quarterly granularity, compare the performance diversity across the 9 representative cities, and gain insights into compounding factors that affect user-experienced 5G performance, such as adoption of 5G devices and the load on the 5G network. Our study uncovers the typical life-cycle of a new cellular technology generation as it undergoes its “growing pain” towards delivering its promised QoE over the previous technology generation.
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- PAR ID:
- 10643395
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 17 to 31
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- 5G, Measurement, Coverage, Network Performance
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Madison, WI
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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