T-Mobile is the reigning king though, with an impressive average download speed of 150Mbps. Verizon’s average is a little quicker, at 56.2Mbps. At the lowest end is AT&T with average 5G download speeds of 49.1Mbps - which isn’t much faster than your typical 4G network. That will likely change as time goes on and carriers improve the quality of the 5G networks.Īccording to a recent report from Opensignal, there’s a massive gulf between carriers at the moment. The currently available nationwide networks all depend on low-band 5G, and while there are pockets of mmWave coverage around the country, you won’t spend much time, if any, in those pockets. For more about the 5G spectrum and the different types of 5G, check out our guide. The opposite is true for the high-band mmWave spectrum - you’ll get superfast download speeds, but radio waves can’t travel far or make their way through obstacles. The low-band spectrum, often referred to as Sub-6, is able to travel long distances and penetrate obstacles, but it delivers slower download speeds. For the uninitiated, 5G is made up of a few different frequency bands. Of course, download speeds vary a lot depending on the type of 5G you’re connected to. Still, those speeds are not available anywhere right now and are mostly dependent on the modem inside your device.

The latest flavors of 4G LTE-A can theoretically go as high as 1Gbps, which ranges into 5G territory. Then there’s the issue of carriers mislabeling their networks many labeled HSPA+, which is a 3G technology, as 4G.

The averages here are approximate, and all the different technologies complicate the results because each generation has evolved and continued to grow, even after the next generation began to roll out. That doesn’t mean very much in isolation, however, so here’s a table that pits the theoretical speeds of 5G technology against different generations of wireless technology: Depending on your 5G coverage, maximum download speeds often range from 1Gbps to 10Gbps, and latency, or the time it takes to send data, could go as low as 1 millisecond (ms). The theoretical maximum speeds of 5G are pretty groundbreaking - but we have a very long way to go before you’re likely to hit that kind of peak speed in the real world, regardless of your connected device.

The truth is, the 5G speeds you get will depend on many factors, including where you are, what 5G network you’re connecting to, how many other people are connecting, and what 5G device you’re using. We could say, “How long is a piece of string?” But that wouldn’t be a very useful answer.

Mbps download speed