How mature is 5G deployment? A cross-sectional, year-long study of 5G uplink performance
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 (1 year)? (2) Does 5G provide better performance than its predecessor Long-Term Evolution (LTE)? (3) Does the technology offer similar performance across diverse geographic areas and cellular operators? We answer this important question by conducting two year-long measurement campaigns of 5G uplink performance leveraging a custom Android app: one crowd-sourced, cross-sectional campaign spanning 8 major cities in 7 countries and two different continents (Europe and North America), and one controlled campaign focusing on mmWave deployment at a fixed location in the downtown area of Boston, MA. Our datasets 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.
Authors
- Dimitrios Koutsonikolas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0525-0087)
- Carla Fabiana Chiasserini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1410-660X)
- Shivang Aggarwal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7190-5478)
- Xiong Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5971-277X)
- Falko Dressler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1989-1750)
- Charalampos Orfanidis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6581-314X)
- Joana Angjo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8957-6676)
- Özgü Alay (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5800-2779)
- Joerg Widmer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6667-8779)
- Sigrid Dimce (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9143-3976)
- Claudio Fiandrino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4323-4355)
- Ana Aguiar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6020-8087)
- Moinak Ghoshal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7194-7646)
- Shirui Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6607-0313)
- Paniz Parastar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0079-0177)
- Y. Charlie Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8096-7077)
- Yin Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4118-4574)
- Imran Khan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4814-3580)
- Yenchia Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6911-3588)
- Mushahid Hussain (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4913-4651)
- Steven Y. Ko
- A. Rané
- Sumit Hawal
Institutions
- Northeastern University (US)
- Hewlett-Packard (United States) (US)
- Politecnico di Torino (IT)
- Universidade do Porto (PT)
- University of Oslo (NO)
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- IMDEA Networks (ES)
- Technische Universität Berlin (DE)
- Technical University of Denmark (DK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Computer Communications
- Published
- 2025-04-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108153
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Advanced MIMO Systems Optimization
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.73