Verizon (America)

With an astounding average 5G speed of 506.1 Mbps, Verizon, the American multinational telecommunications conglomerate, is the top provider of speed in 5G networks. Its 5G network is deployed on mmWave spectrum, and with already providing 5G in 30 cities of America, it plans to spread the network to 30 more cities by the end of the year.

LG U+ (South Korea)

LG owned, LG Uplus is a South Korean cellular carrier, which comes in second in our list with an average 5G download speed for its users at 238.7 Mbps. Formerly known as LG Telecom, in the July 2010 merger, the carrier adopted its new name. LG U+ offers a variety of mobile services, including banking and music.

SK Telecom (South Korea)

One of the country’s largest chaebols, SK Group, owns SK Telecom. Another South Korean wireless telecommunications operator in the list, SK, provides an average 5G download speed of 220.6Mbps.

KT (South Korea)

South Korea’s first and the largest telecommunications company KT Corporation, formerly known as Korea Telecom, serves a huge majority of the country’s fixed-line subscribers and roughly 45 percent of high-speed Internet users. Its average 5G download speed is 215.0 Mbps.

Telstra (Australia)

The only Australian company on the list, Telstra, provides an average 5G download speed of 157.0 Mbps. It is Australia’s largest wireless carrier and largest telecommunications company by market share.

EE (UK)

A brand within the BT Group, EE (formerly Everything Everywhere), is the UK’s largest network provider. Its user’s average 5G download speed is 149.8 Mbps.

Vodafone (UK)

One of the most famous telecommunications company, Vodafone, is a British company which predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The average 5G download speed for its customers is 122.1 Mbps.

Sprint (USA)

Before its merger with T-Mobile, Sprint Corporation was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers. Its average 5G download speed 114.2 Mbps.

AT&T (USA)

One of the big names in the American telecommunications industry, AT&T found a place on the list in the ninth place with an average 5G download speed of 62.7 Mbps. It is the world’s largest telecommunications company, also featuring on rank ninth on the Fortune 500 as of 2018.

T-Mobile (USA)

We conclude the list with T-Mobile USA (TMUS) with an average 5G download speed of 47.0 Mbps. The company is the third-largest wireless carrier in the United States and, as of the end of Q3 2020, has 100.3 million subscribers.

Across the 10 operators, the average speeds of 5G downloads are varying massively and are often caused by the type of 5G spectrum used. T-Mobile at 47 Megabits per second (Mbps) and AT&T at 62.7Mbps are operators that used low-band spectrum which has been repurposed from 4G and had excellent coverage but the slowest speeds.

Six operators using the mid-band spectrum had huge variations between them with LG U+ coming out on top with 238.7Mbps while Sprint (USA) was the slowest of the mid-band six at 114.1Mbps. Whereas, Verizon, the network which exclusively uses the mmWave spectrum which is known to be super-fast has a remarkable average download speed on 5G of 506.1Mbps. However, the mmWave spectrum does not have as great a reach as the low and mid-band spectrum.