At Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, MedUX unveiled its 5G quality of experience (QoE) benchmark report, published in February, where it showcased its answers to the question: what European city offers the best 5G QoE?
For MedUX, a testing and monitoring company set up in 2014 that regularly assesses the performance of wireless technologies, understanding how well 5G is performing is not new. Unfortunately, the results of this report demonstrated a dire trend of how claims about 5G performance are not matching up to end user experiences. Rafael González, SVP EMEA at the company, spoke to IoT Insider following the publication of their European Crowdsourcing Report in July 2025, expanding on from the first unveiled at MWC.
The European Crowdsourcing Report’s objective was to establish whether Europe was meeting its targets, as outlined in the European Commission’s Digital Decade strategy, which aims to ensure every European household has Gigabit network coverage by 2030.
“We already found out that by the end of last year, [there was a] gap in urban areas,” explained González. “And we thought, okay, we have a new crowdsourcing solution where we can expand that measurement nationwide.”
Hard-hitting statistics from the report such as only 48%, on average in Europe, have access to 5G coverage, 25% have upper mid-band usage and only 1% have 5G Standalone (SA) usage, all illustrate that Europe is not where it wants to be with its strategy.
Notably, the report highlighted regional disparities in terms of what countries were performing well regarding 5G coverage, those ‘leading’, and those who were doing less well, and ‘lagging’.
The leading countries are the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, and the Czech Republic, who achieved more than 60% of 5G usage. The lagging are the UK, Finland, Austria, Romania, and Hungary, achieving less than 35%.
Another finding showed that while 5G coverage existed on paper, in many countries users still connected to 4G and more than half of traffic from 5G-ready devices flowed over to 4G and other wireless technologies.
Operator claims versus user experience
This is a key proponent of MedUX’s, who conduct these reports with the deliberate aim of investigating whether there is a gap in operators’ claims and user experience.
“If you follow what operators and other stakeholders advertise or [include] the public statements, it seems we are almost close to universal 5G coverage,” said González. “However, when it comes to the end user experience, this is not what citizens are living in their daily lives or what they are struggling with.
“So we cannot ignore that there is a divergence between what we see as citizens and what the operators or other public entities state with regards to coverage.”
Existing measurements of 5G performance – such as looking at signal strength and other indicators – aren’t enough to establish the end user experience when they connect to a network, particularly if this is a congested network in an urban environment – which is why MedUX employs its combination of passive and active measurements.
Active measurements replicate user experiences such as when they’re browsing the web, downloading files, or streaming videos; passive measurements capture network conditions and device behaviour, such as looking at the signal strength and type of connection.
But González was keen to stress that they work with operators, too: “We help them improve customer experience to deliver a service that is according to their expectations. And this not only belongs to the wireless world, it also can be introduced into … discussions about … expectations in the broadband world, in the sense that when you buy … fibre or when you buy a particular broadband product, you expect the operators to comply with what they are advertising.”
The company also engages with governments and policy makers, who are essential in shaping ambitions such as the Digital Decade Strategy.
“That’s one of the reasons [for] publishing this data, because we provided them data … to do evidence-based policies, and also to influence … regulations,” added González. “When they impose a regulation, a public policy … we work with operators as well as … regulators and governments.
“We’re doing a huge 5G testing measurement for the Spanish regulator,” he continued. “We’re also doing some work for the Greek regulator, where we test 5G in urban [and] also rural areas to quantify what is the divide between rural and urban geographies in those countries.”
I posed to González the outcome of one conversation I’d had where the interviewee had said businesses look to invest in countries where the connectivity meets their standards, and therefore countries can attract investment by focusing on the performance of wireless technologies.
“Portugal has been doing very nice work … improving connectivity, improving a favourable environment for businesses to come [into] the country,” González noted, agreeing. “In some of our recent reports, Porton and Lisbon have [the] best five-year experiences in Europe among major European cities. That’s a very important factor when attracting talent, when attracting investments.”
Recommendations going forward
The report highlighted the following recommendations for the European Union to make progress towards its Digital Decade strategy:
- Go beyond coverage for meaningful connectivity, i.e., use connectivity as a tool to drive societal development
- Anticipate a potential 5G divide among states, use it as a wake-up call
- Catch up with world-class technology leaders
- Understand the devil of 5G potential is in the details, i.e. grasp the different 5G flavours
González’s personal recommendation to countries, governments, and policy-makers, was for them to acknowledge these details: “Most importantly, you need to look into the statistical distribution differences among regions, differences between urban and rural areas in general … [it’s] not about how well positioned you are as a country, but how you can help all regions to have the best 5G ever.
“The second thing I think is important, apart from looking at statistical distribution, is differentiating between … pure deployment, and what is … 5G take-up.”
Following this thread, MedUX’s report found that Spain and Greece have a good standing in terms of infrastructure deployment, but it meant very little as they have low 5G take-up.
One conclusion that came out of the report and stands as good advice, is understanding the different flavours of 5G; how basic 5G differentiates from 5G SA, for instance, because it will provide key context as to where these need to be deployed and adopted.
“There is no discussion … in the industry, when it comes to, are we willing to deploy C-band everywhere?” said González. “That’s great, and it is very ambitious, but I don’t think it’s going to be possible, because deploying 3.5GHz has a big impact [on] the investments required, and you cannot deploy [it] in all of the rural and remote areas.”
5G SA may be in its “infancy,” González noted, but it opens up significant opportunities for the industry because of its capability to monetise latency, reliability, and experience.
“The reality is that if we want to unlock this potential of downlink prioritisation or reliable uplink for streamers or for broadcasting … it is clear that we must evolve to satisfy advanced experience requirements, and that only comes with standalone,” he explained.
Although there needs to be discussions about how 5G SA will be deployed – with González adding that he didn’t think it would be deployed “massively and rapidly in a very short time” if there were no use cases for it – it represented the “future”, and better defining the kind of 5G coverage needed will be a key starting point.
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