According to a new joint study from Omdia and Ookla, Europe has had the poorest 5G SA availability and performance among major regions. In Q4 2024, China (80%), India (52%), and the United States (24%) led the world in 5G SA availability based on Speedtest® sample share, markedly ahead of Europe (2%).

The European region also lagged behind its peers in performance, with the median European consumer experiencing 5G SA download speeds of 221.17 Mbps—lower than those in the Americas (384.42 Mbps) and both Developed (237.04 Mbps) and Emerging (259.73 Mbps) Asia Pacific. The interplay of earlier deployments, a more diversified multi-band spectrum strategy, and greater operator willingness to invest in the 5G core to monetize new use cases have driven rollouts at a faster pace in regions outside Europe.

The European Commission has championed measures to accelerate private investment in 5G SA, highlighting network slicing—a flagship capability of cloud-native core networks—as a key potential driver of its broader industrial strategy in sectors such as precision manufacturing, defense and clean energy. Up until this point, high-quality public data examining Europe’s progress in 5G SA—and benchmarking its competitive position relative to other global regions—has been scarce. In its latest annual report, Connect Europe, the trade body representing Europe’s telecoms operators, noted that “there is limited information available about the extent of operators’ rollout of 5G SA.”

Advanced network capabilities enabled by the technology remain stubbornly limited to just a few operators in leading markets such as the U.S., according to the study, while Europe lags behind its peers on several 5G SA performance indicators, “raising concerns about the bloc’s competitiveness in the technology.”

Network operator investment per capita also lags in Europe as per the below chart:

When faced with choices among investments in fiber, 5G RAN, and 5G SA core, the latter frequently loses out, since operators can still launch a “5G” network by leveraging alternative technologies. There is also a lack of 5G SA-compatible devices, especially devices with User Equipment Routing Selection Policy (URSP) technology, which allows a device to dynamically select a slice (or multiple slices) provisioned by an operator. However, only Android 12/iOS 17 mobile devices  support that largely unknown technology.

While capital spending on the 5G core transition is now increasing rapidly, European network operators will remain committed to strict cost discipline Based on Omdia’s Q3 2024 quarterly core software market share and forecast, the research firm believes that the global core market revenue from both 4G and 5G network functions will grow with a five-year CAGR of 3.2% between 2023 and 2028. When considering the spending in 5G core software, the forecasted growth with a five-year CAGR during the same period is of 17.0%.

Omdia now forecasts that 5G SA core spending in EMEA will grow with a five-year CAGR of 26.2% between 2023 and 2028. Nonetheless, as a prerequisite, deploying the 5G core also requires a good 5G radio coverage, to avoid a degraded experience where the 5G coverage is limited or nonexistent, and where the user falls back on 4G-LTE or 2G/3G. This means operators must invest in 5G RAN, which is usually considered the highest capex draining activity for an operator. While 5G is known for very high throughput speeds using mid-band (and particularly C-band) spectrum, these bands need to be complemented by sub-GHz spectrum deployment, in order to offer improved in-building and wide area coverage. This rollout has been slow in many European markets, with 5G availability in all countries outside the Nordics remaining significantly lower than that in the United States and China, according to Ookla’s Q4 2024 Speedtest Intelligence® data.

One bright spot is that Europe has made progress on achieving low latency on its 5G networks. In Q4 2024, the average country-wide median latency in Europe was 32 milliseconds (ms) compared to 35 ms in the Americas and 36 ms in Emerging Asia Pacific region.

References:

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/eurobites-europe-behind-on-5g-sa-study

https://www.ookla.com/s/media/2025/02/ookla_omdia-5GSA_0225.pdf

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