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Real 5G is nearly three times faster than LTE, but not everywhere
Carriers will tell you that 5G is a huge leap over LTE, but how much better is it in the real world? According to Opensignal's crowdsourced data, it's indeed a lot faster -- but mainly in the US. The research firm has found that peak download speeds on 5G reach just past 1.8Gbps in the States versus 678Mbps for LTE, or about 2.7 times faster. That's owing mainly to the use of millimeter wave spectrum whose ultra-high frequencies (about 30GHz and up) allow such a huge bandwidth boost. Other countries don't have it quite so rosy, though, and there are caveats to the American figures.
Mobile internet is faster than WiFi in 33 countries
It's tempting to assume that a good WiFi hotspot will outpace modern cellular data, but that's not necessarily true -- in some countries, WiFi might be more of a pain. OpenSignal has conducted a study showing that mobile data is faster on average than WiFi hotspots in 33 countries, including multiple African, European, Latin American and Middle Eastern nations. And the differences are sometime gigantic. You'll typically have an advantage of 10Mbps or more in places like Australia, Oman and the Czech Republic, while multi-megabit advantages are common in places like Austria, Iran and South Africa.
