4G Around The World: Where Should You Live To Enjoy The Fastest LTE Speeds?

Does your country offer you decent speeds on currently the latest mobile standard 4G? An expansive report compiled recently has offered a detailed perspective about the world’s cellular communications and what the real-world speeds are, despite networks upgrading their cell towers to offer 4th Generation or 4G speeds for mobile devices.

Merely having the “best” LTE coverage isn’t enough to offer you decent speeds. OpenSignal has published its second State of LTE report, looking at aspects such as speed and coverage of 4G on a country-by-country basis. The company has reliably offered statistics pertaining to data speeds from its giant crowd-sourced sensor network that looks at the stream of downloads.

So far, OpenSignal has been one of the biggest resources for independent third-party data on the speed and network coverage of mobile networks, tracking coverage across the board. Using statistics garnered from six million of its LTE users over a three-month period (November to January), it was revealed that Spain has the fastest average LTE networks.

With an average download speed of 18Mbps, one can surf uninterrupted in Spain on the Vodafone ES network that theoretically offers about 25.5Mbps. However, the network falls short on coverage, being spotty in multiple locations, kicking users back on 3G. If it’s reliable coverage you seek, better head to South Korea, where LG U+ offers the most extensive LTE with 99 percent coverage across the nation. Overall, the country boasts of the highest LTE “time on” with 95 percent.

According to OpenSignal, “time-on” essentially means the time a user is on 4G, irrespective of the geographic spread.

The company justifies the standard, saying, “Coverage is most important where users actually spend their time.”

The annual report, which debuted last year, has been an eye-opener for cellular customers who have been lulled by advertisements that claimed fantastic speeds and reliable coverage combined with “always-on” service. Last year’s report revealed that the U.S. had the second-slowest 4G mobile Internet speeds while Australia had the fastest (24.5Mbps). While Brazil had the fastest LTE network, offering speeds of 27.8Mbps, the “time-on” factor was very poor.

OpenSignal has categorically mentioned it excludes “certain networks that have too little sample sizes.” Hence, if you are the lucky few enjoying blazing fast LTE speeds, your network might still not make the list because of its limited coverage.

In conclusion, if you desire the best speed and coverage, apart from being an always-on, reliable connection, you should consider moving to South Korea.

[Image Credit | OpenSignal, Lunchbox]