5G Speed: How to Understand the Numbers

5G is the current generation of high-speed wireless internet. It surpasses 4G in speed by at least a factor of 10, and is even faster than what most people get from their wired broadband connection at home.

While that might sound impressive, it's also hard to understand what this really means for you when you’re using your phone or downloading something at home on your computer. How is 5G faster when it comes to regular tasks like downloading apps and streaming movies?

It’s easy to talk about how 5G can change the world, like enabling enhanced VR and AR experiences, holographic phone calls, interconnected smart cities, etc. However, to understand how fast it really is, let's look at some more relatable, real world examples.

5G Speed: What the Standards Call For

For a network to be considered 5G, it has to abide by certain rules set by governing authorities like 3GPP. One of those specifications is speed for uploads and downloads.

There's a minimum peak download rate and a minimum peak upload rate for a network to be called a 5G network, meaning that each 5G base station has to support speeds at least this fast:

• 5G peak download speed: 20 Gb/s (gigabits per second), or 20,480 Mb/s (megabits per second)
• 5G peak upload speed: 10 Gb/s (gigabits per second), or 10,240 Mb/s (megabits per second)

Converting Gigabits to Megabytes and Gigabytes

Because there are eight bits in every byte, to convert those 5G speeds into megabytes (MB) and gigabytes (GB), you have to divide them by eight. Many measurements are in these units instead of megabits and gigabits, so it’s important to understand both.

Here are the same 5G speeds, this time written in bytes instead of bits:

• 5G peak download speed: 2.5 GB/s (gigabytes per second), or 2,560 MB/s (megabytes per second)
• 5G peak upload speed: 1.25 GB/s (gigabytes per second), or 1,280 MB/s (megabytes per second)

Minimum Latency Requirement

5G also has a minimum latency requirement. Latency refers to the difference in time between when the cell tower sends data and when the destination device (like your phone) receives the data.

5G requires a minimum latency of just 4 ms, assuming that ideal conditions are met, but could drop to as low as 1 ms for some forms of communication, particularly ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC).

Actual 5G Network Speeds

The measurements listed above are a reflection of 5G speeds in ideal conditions with basically no latency or interference, and only if your device is the only one using that 5G cell.

In other words, mobile users will probably never experience peak download/upload speeds. However, it is possible to get those speeds if you're using a dedicated, fixed wireless access (FWA) system where you don't have to split the bandwidth with other users.

For example, UK’s Three mobile network operator achieved a whopping 2 Gb/s download speed on a fixed wireless access (FWA) environment. However, actual speeds are only 80 to 100 Mb/s.

That being said, how fast is 5G, really? If you were to sign up right now, what internet speeds could you expect?

Factors That Affect Speed

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t so straightforward. Actual 5G speeds depend on not only where you’re located when you access the network, but other factors like the hardware you’re using, the speeds the network is capable of, how many other users are sharing the 20+ Gb/s, and what type of interference is at play between you and the cell delivering 5G.

With Verizon, for example, which was one of the first companies to release 5G in the United States, we can see that a Verizon 5G Home user with FWA can get anywhere from 300 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s. Not only does Verizon’s 5G broadband service guarantee such speeds, users report the same.

Speed Predictions

Beyond stats we can gather today with live 5G networks, are speculations made by carriers. T-Mobile, for example, says 450 Mb/s is the average speed a user can expect; this is expected to go as high as 4 Gb/s by 2024. For the company's FWA service, typical download speeds currently top out at around 250 Mbps.

Some companies have measured much faster 5G speeds. Japan’s NTT DOCOMO achieved over 25 Gb/s during a 5G trial involving a moving vehicle.

That said, it's still important to remember all the factors at play that impact speed. Being indoors can sometimes drastically cut down on the speed, and moving in a car or even walking down the street can bring top speeds to a halt.

What 5G's Wireless Speed Means for You

Like we mentioned above, without examples, it can be difficult to visualize what you can do on a 5G network vs a 4G network, or any other slower connection.

Consider this: You download a movie that's 3 GB in size, using 5G, 4G, 4G LTE, and 3G networks. Here's how long it might take to download the movie on those different kinds of mobile networks (using realistic speeds, not peak speeds):

• 3G: 1 hour, 8 minutes¹
• 4G: 40 minutes²
• 4G LTE: 27 minutes³
• Gigabit LTE: 61 seconds⁴
• 5G: 35 seconds⁵

How Fast Is 5G—Really?

Here are some other examples of how long it would take to download different sized files on a 5G network, assuming different speeds:

• 1 Gb/s: Two seconds to download 75 JPG images (300 MB total)
• 5 Gb/s: Eight seconds to download two full seasons of The Office (around 5 GB) through Netflix
• 10 Gb/s: About six seconds to save your friend's home movie (8 GB)
• 15 Gb/s: One minute to download a 105 GB archive of your data backed up online
• 20 Gb/s: Under two minutes to download Avatar: Special Edition (276 GB)

Of course, all your online activities are faster on 5G, but looking at giant files, like in the examples above, really show how incredibly fast things can be on 5G.

_{1) If the 3G connection averaged 6 Mb/s (0.75 MB/s), a 3 GB file (3,072 MB) would take over an hour to download (3072/0.75/60).}

_{2) With an average download speed of 10 Mb/s (1.25 MB/s), a 3 GB movie (3,072 MB) can be downloaded fully in just over 40 minutes (3072/1.25/60).}

_{3) Given a 15 Mb/s (1.87 MB/s) average download speed for 4G LTE, you could download a 3 GB file (3,072 MB) in just over 27 minutes (3072/1.87/60).}

_{4) With a 400 Mb/s (50 MB/s) download speed, a 3 GB file (3,072 MB) would take just over a minute to download (3072/50).}

_{5) Assuming a download speed of 700 Mb/s (87.5 MB/s), a 3 GB file (3,072 MB) could be downloaded in just 35 seconds (3072/87.5).}