Opensignal report: US average 5G speeds (50.9 Mbps), just 1.8x 4G speeds (28.9 Mbps), lag behind the rest of the world; South Korea and Saudi Arabia lead
It's no surprise at this point that United States rollouts of 5G networks haven't delivered on the next-generation cellular standard's promise …
Context & Ripple Effects
Opensignal's measurement series has documented the same pattern for years: US mobile speeds ranked among the slowest in the world in the 2015 State of LTE report, 55th in LTE download speeds by the 2016 global LTE report, and 47th among 77 countries in the 2019 4G speed study. The 5G era was supposed to reset that ranking.
Instead, this report shows US 5G averaging 50.9 Mbps — only 1.8x the country's own 4G speeds — while South Korea and Saudi Arabia lead globally. It extends the May finding that Verizon's users saw 5G just 0.5% of the time despite its fast speeds: US carriers have 5G that is either scarce or barely faster than what it replaces.
First-order effects
- US carriers' 5G marketing claims are directly undercut by Opensignal's data, since the typical US user's 50.9 Mbps 5G experience is a marginal upgrade over the 28.9 Mbps 4G baseline rather than a generational leap.
- South Korea and Saudi Arabia's lead gives their operators a measurable performance benchmark that US carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile — now trail in every cross-country comparison Opensignal publishes.
Second-order effects
- Carriers whose 5G coverage is thin or speed-limited face pressure to shift from millimeter-wave deployments toward broader mid-band rollouts, since the May operator analysis showed fast-but-rare 5G fails users as badly as slow 5G.
- Device makers and handset marketers lose the '5G' badge as a differentiator in the US market when the network behind it delivers 1.8x 4G, pushing competition back toward coverage and consistency.
Third-order effects
- If the gap persists, the US risks repeating its LTE-era trajectory — ranked 47th-55th across the 2015-2019 reports — into the 5G generation, with spectrum allocation and deployment choices rather than handset availability as the binding constraint.
- Sustained cross-country measurement by Opensignal turns national 5G rankings into a recurring public benchmark, giving regulators and carriers abroad (South Korea, Saudi Arabia) a template for demonstrating leadership that US carriers must answer.
The trend: Cellular network quality is becoming a persistent national-ranking story, with the US trailing the same leaders across the LTE and 5G generations while Opensignal's measurements set the public scoreboard.