New OpenSignal report says LTE is getting faster, more available
The U.S. moved up into the top five countries for the best availability of LTE, but domestic LTE speeds are sub-par, according to the most recent analysis by OpenSignal.
The U.S. moved from #10 to #4 on OpenSignal’s ranking of LTE availability, with LTE now accessible to an estimated 86.5% of the population, which the group called “an impressive feat considering the huge physical size of the U.S. compared to the smaller geographies of its 4G peers.”
Sixteen countries around the world have now reached more than 80% LTE availability, up from 11 at the time of the last report — including India, due to the launch of Reliance Jio.
In terms of speed, OpenSignal found that four countries — Singapore, South Korea, Hungary and Norway — offer average LTE download speeds of 40 Mbps or greater. Singapore had the highest measured speed, at 46 Mbps.
Fifteen countries now have average LTE speeds of 30 Mbps, up from 11 in the previous report. Unfortunately, the U.S. didn’t even come close to that figure — OpenSignal reported that the average download speed was just shy of 15 Mbps.
“The U.S., and to a lesser extent Japan, lag well behind their 4G peers when it comes to high-performance connections” despite being early LTE adopters, OpenSignal concluded, going on to add that “Countries can have highly accessible networks, but their speeds can be limited by capacity constraints. Meanwhile countries with new LTE networks may have limited 4G availability but, due to their light loads, can support considerably fast speeds.”
Among the other findings:
– South Korea and Japan continues to lead the world in LTE availability and speed, covering more than 90% of their respective populations. However, as mentioned, Singapore offers among the very highest speeds while Japan was at around 25 Mbps.
-The entry of Reliance Jio to the Indian market pushed the entire country into greater LTE avaiability. “India shot up our LTE availability rankings, reflecting a rare instance in which a single operator can have an outsized impact on a mobile market in just a short time. Jio’s nationwide 4G launch in September attracted 100 million LTE subscribers, making 4G services far more accessible in India but at the expense of lower average speeds,” OpenSignal said.
OpenSignal based its report on more than 19 billion measurements collected by nearly 560,000 devices and users to assess LTE networks in 75 countries; the group noted that it only ranked companies for which it had enough data for meaningful analysis. The sample period coverage between Jan. 1-Mar. 30th 2017.
-While European countries such as German and France lag on LTE deployments, with availability for less than 60% of their populations, Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania have established far-reaching and faster networks; Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia also rank highly in LTE network speeds.
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