5G phones are now widely available, but the same cannot be said about 5G networks. Polls last week showed that the biggest barrier to adoption is that some countries still haven’t activated their 5G networks.
The second most common problem is that many users do not yet have 5G-enabled phones (about a quarter of voters). It wouldn’t be surprising if they didn’t live in an area with 5G coverage. Of course, that hasn’t stopped manufacturers from selling 5G phones in those regions — they’re positioning them for the future.
They do put in the work, for example, Airtel in India has used phones from Apple, Realme, OnePlus, vivo and others while running trials on its upcoming 5G network to make sure they actually work when the time comes.
The results for regions with active 5G networks are very interesting. Many people report that they don’t need it because 4G is fast enough. Some people actually complain about lower 5G speeds in their area, but that will change as carriers rebalance their networks from 4G to 5G and 5G is deployed on new frequency bands.
The good news is that we’ve only seen very few complaints about not switching to 5G because of the extra cost (5G plans can sometimes cost more than 4G plans, depending on the carrier).
