Why are 5G users experiencing problems with their phone signal? - BBC News 

Glad I’m not the only one who noticed this. My guess is the telecoms haven’t actually invested much in 5G infrastructure but were happy to use it in their marketing.

It's not just 5G guys. There are two kinds of 5G: sub6 and mmWave. The first one works on almost the same spectrum as 4G and provides only marginally faster speeds, the second one is much higher but it's at such an high frequency that even a window will block the signal. This means that the majority of networks are deploying sub6 as opposed to mmWave and as such you'll get speeds close to 4G (but way better ping). P.s when you buy a phone that says "5G compliant", make sure it's both sub6 and mmWave compliant in the specs, 'cause the big fat 5G label doesn't make it mandatory to support both

the lesson is: for every purchase you make, you can't buy something else. Varied sources of income is wise and especially living within your means. Think about taxes and how you get your income. I made $160K combined net last year and paid no Federal taxes. I own a 23 y/o vehicle because that's all I need and I like it well enough and I can do anything I want to. I can pay my bills with no stress, but I don't live like I have that. I have no complaints but ideas to help multiply sources of income will be nice

People are more than happy with 4g speeds they just want a more reliable signal

It is sad to hear this given that many custmers are being charged more for the so called 5G when, in fact, they get a very poor 5G service.

The fact is "businesses were built mainly for profit and not to benefit consumers"

If it wasn't ready, it should not have been marketed to the masses.

Consume consume consume.

I live in the U.S. Recently my brother was ill and was trying to call my sister, who lives a few miles away, for help. He made fifteen calls, and my sister's phone never rang. The company's story was that the signal "was bouncing off the wrong tower." How's that for service.? This was in a city of several million people.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with an engineer friend of mine about a year ago. He mentioned that 5G is awsome, if you are close to one of the towers. Otherwise it’s the worse than 4G. I thought he was exaggerating, but it looks like he was right. Glad I haven’t upgraded yet. My condolences to those who did.

I quite often drop back to 3g when things go really slow because basically nobody uses it anymore. Was the same with prior standards upgrades.

It's because Chinese 🇨🇳 Huawei is attempting something. Lol

It depends completely on which network you are on, if you are on Three UK, then the 5G capacity and bandwidth are significantly better than 4G (particularly if you are using Three"s 4G network). Also bear in mind that the "5G hype" is focused on Standalone mm-wave 5G; the UK is currently only using non-standalone, non-mm-wave 5G; with the former you potentially get multi gigabit speeds, you don't with the latter.

Reminds me of when 4G launched here in Australia. I was working in tech support for one of the major telcos and lost count of the number of customers who had patchy 4G coverage who had to use 3G+ (HSPA) to get decent internet speeds. We weren't supposed to advise them that though as "it could damage our branding" but we all chose to ignore that.

As long as my old flip phone still works for text and voice, I'll be a happy camper.

Funny that some networks try and charge more money for 5G plans, it’s a technology which helps the telecom provider

great editing on this one guys really like the transitions

I'm so thankful that Three provided 5G masts to our area of countryside villages. We've all gone from a maximum of 14mbps on copper to up to 700mbps on mobile data. It is cheaper too per month! More providers supplying services will increase competition and drive down prices further.

Yeah same. I got the fold 3 last year and at first the 5g upgrade was amazing, but quickly ran into issues.

3 years ago US blocked Huawei being used in UK and Europe over national geopolitical concerns. Huawei infrastructure are way ahead of stuff anyone else is using. Maybe that was where the initial hype came from

Its like that here in Caerphilly.

I have a 5G compatible phone, but i keep it on 4G, mainly for saving the battery. For what i use the internet, 4G is perfectly fine.

There’re consequences to ditch the Huawei 5G, longer deployment schedule and billions of pound to replace all existing base stations.

I went from 4G with 3 to 5G with EE and it’s a world apart. Multiple times a day, three would not load a webpage. It was infuriating.

What isn't made clear either is the fact that 4G or 5G doesn't natively carry calls or texts, only E/2G or H/3G does it. Instead, you have to enable Voice over LTE which a lot of providers don't have great support for over here. For example, you may have to call your mobile provider to get it set up.

5G without Huawei is just like 4G upgraded. If you are using 5G in China you will get more and more surprise

Excellent report

You can deploy the network but you need the upgraded servers to back it all up. If you suddenly increase everyone's speeds on an already heavily overloaded network your only going to see problems. And just beavause your phone shows 5g doesnt mean thats your speed. You need to check the hops and the related timings (hops between the linked computers that make a path for you in a network), maybe use windows cmd (stat net, etc) while using your phone as a hotspot if theres no app available.

Overhyped is the right word there, and tech people have known this before 5G was announced to the world with a whole ton of extremely unrealistic advertisement made by mobile telecoms. It's all down to very basic physics principles, particularly the electromagnetic spectrum. In short, 5G operates somewhere between 4G and Wi-fi. 4G has a long reach, can go through walls, but is limited in speed. Wi-fi can go very fast, but you'll often lose signal as soon as there is a wall between you and the access point, or you go too far away. 5G can go faster, but it actually operates in a spectrum going from speeds that are marginally better than 4G, up to several times faster. What the overhyped market campaign was showing was the optimal best case scenario with mmWave tech that allows for speeds several times that of 4G... but in practice, in order for you to get that you'll have to be no more than a block line of sight away from a 5G antenna, I'm being generous. If anything gets in the way, or you are over that, you'll either get your speed stepped down or completely lose it depending on antenna configuration. Heck, you could lose signal by just turning away. Implementation of proper 5G coverage that gets anywhere near 4G coverage will take multiple times more than 4G did, by which I mean potentially decades, and it will also reach much less of what 4G did, because of this range and penetration limitation. You know how you lose 4G signal when you get into an elevator? For fast 5G speeds this will happen when you get inside... anything that doesn't have a 5G antenna in it. A single tall 4G antenna could cover an entire neighborhood and more with ease, now imagine how many more 5G antennas you'd need if you want the fastest speed given that it can't reach you if you are a block away in clear line of sight. No matter how much you got hammered by misleading ads, the truth of it is that 5G is at most a complementary tech to 4G. It'll likely never replace it fully, and coverage will mostly be limited to large city centers with plenty of utility pole space to install 5G antennas at. Indoors, it'll only really become a thing if people start using it to replace regular Internet connectivity such as fiber, cable and ADSL, and this is likely not happening due to different pricing schemes and it being a divided market shared between huge oligopolies. One way or another, all the artificial limitations and anti-consumer measures applies, so you end up not being able to rely on a single solution. There will be exceptions of course, but they'll remain mostly that - exceptional cases. Well, that's for western markets I guess... in countries without huge telecom monopolies, this could go better. Without the marketing lies, 5G can be a good thing. It's just not really replacing 4G overtime like 4G/LTE did with 3G.

This is why 4G is still the best and CHEAPER 😤👍

Have held off moving away from well priced 4G SIM only contract and moving to new 5G plan in the UK on EE currently plan allows me alot more options. Get good speed and see need to move .

I live in a village near Gatwick airport and we don't have any phone reception 🤷🏻🙄

He had to mention covid and 5g in the same sentence didn't he! Brace yourselves 😆

It's the same thing here in America 5G service is crappy at best I live in Pennsylvania Philadelphia is really the only city that has good 5G coverage once you leave Philadelphia it's pretty much not existent or randomly Cuts in and out. Also it kills your battery because it is constantly trying to look for a 5G Tower that does not exist.

I've noticed this too. Does anyone have any problems today?

I’m with EE and since moving to 5G I have actually had worse connection. On 5G, sometimes I will not get any service, and will have to restart the connection to get data again. Disappointing!

I recently bought a 5G phone and it worked fine for about a day then I couldn't send text. I could receive it but could not send it. Spent an hour or so with tech but finally gave up and went back to my old 4G phone. Boston Massachusetts, USA. I have little hope that 5G is ever going to be a good design or choice. More hardware means more problems.

This happens only in Europe and USA. Not in Asia because Asia is leading in 5G and Telecom tech. While we were using Video calls since early 2000s, US just found out about it when iphone came out almost a decade later with Facetime. We also had mpbile wallets a decade ahead of Google Wallet and Apple Pay

It does t have the range, it’s fine if you’re in the city near a transmitter, but out in the sticks it’s worse than 4G and 3G most the time.. Diminishing returns more bandwidth but far inferior range.. Needs far more transmitters rather than is currently available..

Newer internet technologies have always shown me more problems than usual. The telecom insustry doesn't seem to have the same standards when it comes to releasing a product to the public, as say the software industry, where rigorous QA testing during development is the norm, so that the customer has a high quality product. Telecom should be more honest and fair to consumers in my opinion.

Sainsburys Leicester can be a bad connection for 4g and 5g at Fose Park

1) Sell overpriced 5G phones that don't work. 2) Wait five years to build 5G networks promised five years AGO. 3) Sell MORE overpriced 5G phones once the old phones break. $$$ profit! $$$

There is a 7G summit ongoing at the minute in the UK to address these issues ...

And 4G LTE is now at the 3G speeds coincidentally

I'm supposedly in a 5g hotspot, got a Samsung galaxy fold 4 on EE and I've never had a 5g signal anywhere in almost 5 months.

Here in the USA the problems seems to be the same as the UK.

The difference is the price. That's all.

what is that screen banner thing showing supposed speed in 1:56 dear BBC are you serious?

Reminds me of electric cars. The marketers did a great job, but actually implementing the infrastructure sucked. Electric car infrastructure is barely getting better now, but eventually, it will get better. I think the issue with adopting new technology is not everywhere will be updated at once, so it's best to just wait until the tech is actually useable. Rolling out new tech and being the first user is always fraught with challenges and issues, so they just need to wait until it becomes more reliable and cheaper to use. It's like when refrigerators were first introduced. They probably were extremely expensive and failed a lot of the time, until new tech adapted and updated them with each new iteration. My advice, don't spend thousands for a new 5g phone, wait till it actually improves

5G is great if you're sitting underneath a 5G but most of the time speeds such as 5G can't go through walls well. The signal (and therfore speeds) are terrible.

I live in the north of Scotland and it is hard to get any signal even in town.

I'm just happy to have a phone and camera in one. Of course other features are a great bonus....🤷‍♂️♥️

On Android phones you can select which bands you want to be active. If 5G isn't working out for you just disable it in your connection settings

The faster the frequency, the shorter the range. Eventually there will be transmitters every twenty feet. But thats going to take loads of negotiations with private property owners.

The difference between 5G & 4G is unnoticeable. Bearing in mind as only one example 25G/b is required for 4K HD steaming everything else is overhead.

If you don't upgrade they can't watch you correctly 24 7 send send you signals what too think while you sleep hear u talking see where you go who your with upgrade or you can't use your banks correctly your creditors n w o

I’m in Eastbourne and over the past year I’ve gone from having spots of 5G to large areas… But it’s not good, when my phone switches to the mast at the crumbles (harbour area) it’s like having no data at all! Web pages, videos and music streaming almost stop! Many times I’ve just given up on whatever I’m doing because it just doesn’t load, but I have no choice when I switch to 5G.

Lately my 5G with ATT is very slow or doesn’t work at all. USA

I’ve got the iPhone 14 pro max and not once had a 5g connection yet anywhere I’ve been.

The government's decision for all 4 of the Operators to have to rip out Huawei infrastructure has hit them with big costs too. This has taken time and money on replacing perfectly good hardware. So that's impacted the 5G-NR rollout too

If there is anything that I regret, it must be coming to the UK to study abroad, because I am used to China's national coverage signal, in contrast, the signal of the UK is ten times worse than that of China, and with the weather, the signal disappears in stages. It can be seen from this that the UK is the poorest developed country in the world, so if I could do it over again, I would not go to the UK to study.

the 'deploying' of 5g sounds so military like.

the editor of this video was having fun

Just be patient he says, I wish the networks were patient with increasing the cost.

its like Bell Canada charging you for fiber internet when you only get 10mbps download...

5G works well in the lab. How many of us live IN a lab? I don't need 5G when I can stream 4K on my 4G.

I live in London and never get a 5g signal.

Could Stream Xbox Game Pass on 1 bar of 4g signal no issues whatsoever with a 90 or 120 refresh rate anywhere in my apartment at anytime. 5g on the other hand works better when the signal is low if the signal is full sometimes it struggles to check the weather.. Feels like 2g with a 3 added on for comedic effect.

i Think the issue is rollout of infrastructure to support 5G

I still use 4G since 2016 until now and I love it

I wonder how much of this had to do with UK being forced by US to get rid of all Huawei components even after they had already completed a lot of the installations. All this was after British security experts said the risks were manageable: "If your package is sealed in a strong enough container then it doesn't matter if the carrier is dodgy", UK telecom businesses were forced to shell out millions to replace the equipment. I honestly don't think people should blame the network providers. I mean it is a massive operation that was forced upon them. :D The end result: Cost will be passed on to the customers while quality of service will diminish.

I'm no expert but i think it's all controlled by the cellular mast your handset connects to. They may have QoS (Quality of service) applied to them allowing them to switch which band on the frequency spectrum your phone connects to, thus throttling the speed. I have a 4G modem and on power up it connects band 1 which i think is the highest speed but then the mast recognises that it's not a phone connected then lowers me down to a slower band. Some operators guarantee higher speeds but they are expensive. With the lesser expensive sim only contracts, you are not priority and so you will rarely be on band 1.

Because of apps we use and websites we log into actually it's not really necassary. 5G technology is faster that's right but there is one trade-off about that which is signal quality. If you are close a 5G base station it's good it's working fine, but when you are getting far (not that far - 5G coverage is way lower than 4G) you are losing signal and it's ended up getting worse than 4G.

Diligence

I'm finding that with video downloads in Sydney with Vodafone. On 5G, with my latest 5G phone, 4G is either the same or faster than 5G. On top of that, when in 5G mode, my phone heats up to the extreme, and my 500 ma battery gets chewed. I am not that impressed. Web pages may spring up a tad quicker, but that's all. I personally think the issue is that the phone has to connect to multiple towers on 5g, causing way more power usage from my device and making it heat up and because perhaps it has too constantly be connected to multiple towers, which inhibits the signal and thus the download speed.

5G is easily blocked by walls and buildings. So the faster speed requires line-of-sights. The 'promised' speed above 4G is not needed by most everyone (you're not MMOG on your phone or doing large group video chats, or downloading Gigabyte files to your phone). So the speed and reliability of 4G is actually more important. 5G is just a Tech Answer looking to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Good example is Techno Camon latest phone network connection sucks

UK Infrastructure is 10 years behind the device in your hand , tech is fine but we dont use it

It's frequency all wrong

Of course different networks will offer different speeds depending on reception and comparability. The person who thought up this segment must know nothing about telecommunication. Surely you should've mentioned higher frequencies (which allow more bandwidth) have less coverage - which requires more cell towers to provide the national coverage

3 years

My experience of 5G when I get it is poor. So unreliable and not noticebly fast. 4G is perfectly fine thank you.

We 5g everywhere in USA but there are certain spots where it's just okay and other places it's super fast

Why Glasgow instead of Edinburgh or anywhere else?!! News really has gone massively downhill.

Yep. I have it from 2 years, and past 1 year it doesnt work and I had to make my phone working constantly on 4g :/ and I paid 1500£ for this phone. Just beautiful! :/

Mate 4g is just as bad I'm back on 3g as that actually works

Ever been had?

2g to 3g was such a huge leap. Havent noticed the difference with 4g, let alone 5g.

What was the point in the speed test if they were on different phones and different networks? Pointless...

Another waste of money, networks have always throttled their connections first 4G then 5G. Sometimes there will be full signal but no bandwidth

They didn't do their homework before buying.

I never got one of those phones, lol. Don't need everyone calling me all the time.

the 5 g is just more work and not easy to work.

This is why the uk government wanted Huawei… A bit late to regret tho

Bbc is still on RU-vid. Why isn't it removed?

Safe and effective?

4G and 5G are completely different in NY

I think there's no difference between 4G and 5G in the UK.. The speed that networks have been able to 'roll out' 5G is suspicious to me.. Swear the jump to 4G took a lot longer.. All just a big marketing scheme

Still patiently waiting for 4G here. In Melton Mowbray on Three Got 450 mb down on 5G in Nottingham yesterday 🤣🤦🏻‍♂️

The accents in the UK are impressive.