Fastest 4G LTE speeds globally have peaked at 45 Mbps

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OpenSignal has published its Global State of LTE Report, and it has interesting data. Key among the data is that the fastest 4G LTE speeds around the world have peaked at 45 Mbps. But there is more. We also get to see how the countries of the world rank in terms of 4G technologies, availability, and trends.

Top 10 Fastest 4G LTE Speeds In The World

Here is a list of the fastest 4G speeds around the world.

  1. Singapore – 44.31 Mbps
  2. Netherlands – 42.12 Mbps
  3. Norway – 41.20 Mbps
  4. South Korea – 40.44 Mbps
  5. Hungary – 39.18 Mbps
  6. Belgium – 36.13 Mbps
  7. Australia – 36.08 Mbps
  8. New Zealand – 33.52 Mbps
  9. Bulgaria – 33.34 Mbps
  10. Denmark – 33.09 Mbps

Where does the U.S. stand with 4G LTE speeds? 4G networks there “have been traditionally slow compared to the rest of the world,” with average 4G speeds of 16 Mbps, an increase from the 13 Mbps average that was on the ground when we conducted our 2014 4G LTE speed comparison between Smile 4G in Lagos and Sprint, Verizon, T-mobile and AT&T in New York.

Fastest 4G LTE Speeds In Africa

And on the continent that is home to Wakanda, we have these countries registering the fastest 4G speeds:

  1. South Africa – 20.39 Mbps
  2. Tunisia – 17.84 Mbps
  3. Egypt – 16.68 Mbps
  4. Morocco – 15.80 Mbps
  5. Côte d’Ivoire – 14.97 Mbps
  6. Algeria – 8.65 Mbps

Sadly, the report does not provide information on 4G speeds in more African countries than the above-listed. One wonders what the national average for Nigeria is. But consider that a huge portion of 4G LTE networks in the country have awful quality of service, and some even have the maximum speed on certain LTE data plans pegged to 2 Mbps, the national average for Nigeria cannot be anything impressive.

Global 4G LTE Availability

opensignal 4g lte map february 2018

So, what does the world look like in terms of 4G LTE coverage as at end of 2017? The map below provides a graphical illustration:

As you can see, North America, Europe, and Australasia have the densest coverage. It is interesting that India has 86.26% availability. Africa’s best is Côte d’Ivoire’s 69.3%.

OpenSignal’s Conclusions

As OpenSignal highlights in the report, 4G LTE speeds have improved over the last 8 years from the average 20 Mbps that the technology initially delivered. The fastest 4G networks have hit a plateau of around 45 Mbps in the countries with the fastest speeds.

While OpenSignal expects something to push the fastest 4G speeds beyond 50 Mbps, I am not so optimistic that will happen. Why? Mobile networks in the most advanced LTE countries are beginning to invest in 5G networks. This means that they will rather invest more resources in that direction.

In the US, for example, several cities will get active 5G networks this year. Similar plans are under way in other countries. I wager that 4G LTE has hit its peak and 5G will take it from here.

OpenSignal crunched the data for this report from 58 billion measurements on 5 million devices around the world between the 1st of October and 29th of December 2017. You can download OpenSignal’s latest global 4G LTE report HERE.

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