First speed test of AT&T’s 5G network is pretty disappointing

5G has been heralded as being the next generation of mobile internet. Granted LTE is already pretty fast, but if it could be faster then we don’t really see why there should be any issue, right? Unfortunately from what we can see, it seems that maybe the speeds of 5G aren’t quite what we had expected, at least as far as AT&T’s network is concerned.

In a post on Reddit by u/mwb6d, they did a speed test of AT&T’s 5G network in Indianapolis and based on the results, it doesn’t look particularly promising. On 5G, they acheived 194.88Mbps for downloads, 17.08Mbps for uploads, and a ping of 77ms. However when the LTE switch was flipped, the download speeds were at 187.44Mbps, while upload speeds were at 8.14Mbps, and it seemed to have a similar ping time of 77ms.

Granted the 5G speeds did appear to be faster compared to LTE, but only marginally and not necessarily enough to get truly excited over. The upload speeds were also double that of LTE, but once again we’re not sure if these numbers are something that we should be falling over ourselves to get.

To be fair, 5G is still in the very early stages of being rolled out, which means that there is still time for carriers to make adjustments and fine-tuning. Let’s not forget that 5G coverage will be limited at the start, and 5G smartphones have yet to be launched. We have also pointed out how our “promised 5G” probably won’t be launching in 2019, so maybe we’ll reserve judgement until everything has stabilized.

Source: PCMag