Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the UK's mobile network performance and 5G roll-out compared to large European markets and the USA since 2017, specifically in relation to (1) network coverage, (2) download speeds, and (3) base station deployment.

Our ambition is that all populated areas will have higher-quality standalone 5G by 2030.

Our most recent assessment on network coverage is from August 2024 where the most recent data available showed that 5G was available outside 92% of premises in the UK, compared to the EU average 5G population coverage at 89% and the USA at 98%. Since this assessment UK coverage has increased to 96%.

According to user testing by Ookla (an independent analytics company) the UK median 5G standalone download speed in the 4^th quarter of 2024 was 181.9 Mbps, the US 388.4 Mbps and tests in eight other European countries ranged from 132.1 - 547.5 Mbps.

Ofcom reports that there are 3,300 5G standalone base station deployments in the UK. This is not comparable across markets as it is dependent on factors including topology and spectrum availability.