UK’s 5G user experience lags behind other European countries concludes MedUX report

Despite strong theoretical coverage real UK 5G experience falls short of expectations concludes internet testing and monitoring company MedUX in its  Q1 2025 pan-European study,

The MedUX “Status of 5G Qaality and Experience  in Europe” study reckons UK users connect to 5G networks just 48 percent of the time which is significantly lower than advertised figures.

This shortfall largely stems from reliance on ‘basic’ 5G technologies like Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) and low-frequency bands, rather than faster mid-band (C-Band) or standalone 5G deployments.

When it comes to speeds, the UK sits in a mid-tier position in Europe. Average 5G download speeds remain below 100 Mbps, trailing behind  Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Upload speeds are often below 14 Mbps, limiting capabilities for emerging use cases like content creation, cloud backup, and interactive apps.

MedUX’s crowdsourced benchmark gathered data from millions of real users across Europe and based its conclusions on actual usage not just advertised coverage. The findings show a gap between UK’s theoretical coverage and what users actually get, underscoring current limitations of UK 5G networks.

Further performance gaps emerge in latency, which is unable to support gaming and remote control. Key app experiences also suffer with video streaming often buffering or stalling  Gaming is disrupted by latency and network instability, and social media loads more slowly compared to Nordic and Western European markets the repott notes.

Regional disparities make the picture worse, with rural and suburban areas seeing much weaker 5G performance than urban centres.

The study notes that, without accelerated investment in mid-band spectrum, standalone 5G, and broader network optimisation, the UK risks falling behind its European peers in delivering the full potential of 5G.

For a full copy of the study CONTACT MedUX.