Plenty of room for improvement in mobile quality in Euro cities

The latest benchmark report on 5G performance across 15 European cities from fixed and mobile network testing and benchmarking firm MedUX has revealed that Porto and Stockholm share the top spot in Europe for overall quality of experience (QoE), a measure of user satisfaction, each scoring 4.78 out of 5, but also highlighted significant room for improvement in several cities, particularly Brussels and London.

The Medux research consisted of drive tests conducted during Q4 2024 across 15 major cities in 11 European countries, covering a population of more than 60 million people. The drive test cars used in the study covered more than 5,500 kilometres to understand how mobile operators are deploying and covering European cities with 5G services.

The study found that Porto offers the best overall QoE, leading in data and OTT experience, co-leading with Lisbon in value for speed, and the north Portuguese city shared the first place with Stockholm in overall QoE, showcasing the best data and OTT experience. It registered the lowest gaming average jitter of just 10ms and delivers fast cloud service performance.

Additionally, Porto co-leads with Lisbon in providing the best value for speed, defined as how much data can be transferred, ensuring peak speeds exceeding 800Mbps in the fastest 10% of sessions. Porto also co-leads with Copenhagen in 5G availability, achieving an 86.54% registration rate and maintains 100% connectivity time in 5G mid-band n78, ensuring a consistently high-quality connection. Stockholm co-leads the ranking, leading in video streaming and 5G uplink speed

The report also highlighted Stockholm as co-best overall and 5G only QoE, rated as “excelling” in video streaming, with a 95% rate of 4K video playback time, and 5G upload speeds, achieving a typical (median) speed above 116 Mbps. The city also shares the top spot with Porto for data and over the top (OTT) experience.

Stockholm boasted top time-to-content performance with fast web page loading times of less than 1 second. Furthermore, the Swedish capital leads in web browsing and file transferring and co-leads in social media experience.

Lisbon provided what was rated as the most reliable service along with the fastest 5G download experience, secured the third position in overall QoE and stands out as the most reliable service, with 99.63% successful internet sessions. The Portuguese city also revealed the fastest 5G download speed, reaching 1.9 Gbps, ensuring a superior experience for data-intensive applications. Additionally, Lisbon co-leads with Porto in value for speed and social media experience. Meanwhile, Copenhagen leads in 5G availability with 86.99% technology registration rate, ensuring widespread access to 5G services.

By contrast, Brussels and London were seen as lagging in 5G experience and requiring network improvements. The test data showed that Brussels significantly trailed the leading cities in overall 5G QoE with performance being hampered by lower 5G availability and slower speeds. Furthermore, its overall reliability and streaming services needs improvement.

In an embarrassment for the UK capital, and vindicating the gripes of many users, London ranked last in overall mobile experience, mirroring the 2024 findings. The report reveals subpar 5G availability, slow speeds and a clear need for enhanced reliability across multiple services.

“This report underscores the importance of a holistic approach to 5G quality. While coverage and speed remain key factors, high-quality 5G connectivity and consistent performance across all services and applications are crucial for delivering a truly superior user experience,” said Rafael González, MedUX’s senior vice-president of EMEA.

“Our findings provide valuable insights for operators wanting to optimise their networks and meet the evolving needs of their customers in the 5G era. Our field measurements confirm that, on average, in major European cities, end-users are connected 25% of the time simply to 4G. Furthermore, of the remaining 75% connected to 5G, 10% of deployments lack mid-band spectrum.

“This reality dampens the transformative potential of 5G and calls for urgent policy and investment shifts toward dedicated high-quality 5G deployments for enhanced experience and reliability. Addressing these issues is crucial for Europe to ensure universal 5G coverage across all urban areas by 2025 and to fully leverage the benefits of 5G technology.”