Saudi Arabia among GCC countries with best 5G experience

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Saudi Arabia does astonishingly well in the GCC as the kingdom along with Kuwait registered the biggest jump in video experience in the region using 5G, according to Opensignal’s June report.

5G users in three GCC markets spent more than one-fifth of their time with an active 5G connection. Kuwait tops with a 5G Availability of 39.4%. However, the GCC market with the largest land area — Saudi Arabia with 23.5% 5G Availability — is part of this leading group, an impressive achievement for such a sizeable market, the report said.

Mobile video streaming

With mobile video streaming, there are also significant increases in every market. With 5G, the video experience score in the two countries is 19% higher. In Qatar (9%) and Oman (8%), however, the improvement drops to a single digit, says the report.

Users’ experience with 5G is considerably better than using the previous 4G network technology across GCC markets, where average download speeds with 5G are between 5.2 times faster (Oman) and an astonishing 10.8 times faster (Kuwait) compared with 4G.

Incredible performance

5G speeds continue to be impressive across the GCC, according to the report. In five of the markets, average 5G download speeds top 200Mbps with only users in Oman missing out. In Qatar, average 5G download speeds are even higher at 312Mbps.

5G Peak Download Speeds are even more impressive, with every market seeing peak speeds over 500Mbps and Bahrain topping the region with a 5G Peak Download score of 1163.4Mbps. Upload speeds remain much more modest as operators and network vendors have targeted downloads for the initial improvements in the 5G experience.

This enormous speed increase is because 5G is able to use new high-capacity spectrum bands, such as 3.5GHz, which are not suitable for 4G.

GCC markets on top

Turning to multiplayer gaming, mobile video streaming, and real-time voice app communication, the smaller GCC markets again top the 5G tables. Kuwait has the highest 5G Video Experience score (75.9). On the other two measures, Kuwait drops to second. Instead, Bahrain is top for 5G Games Experience (81.4) and also for 5G Voice App Experience (83.2).

Despite the complexity of deploying 5G network technology to a much larger country, the Kingdom is fourth for 5G Video Experience with a score of 72.5 and is a creditable third for 5G Voice App Experience with 81.3.

Four of the markets rate as Very Good (68-78) for 5G Video Experience: Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. This means users are able to stream video at 1080p or better resolution with satisfactory loading times and little stalling. The UAE and Qatar are in the next category, Good (58-68).

As 5G network technology continues to improve, with newer versions of the 5G standards arriving, Opensignal will continue to quantify the extent to which users’ 5G experience changes, says the report.