Across the UK’s major regions, Scotland saw the joint-biggest increase in broadband speed with 5G, according to new research by Opensignal.

Scotland’s speed improved by a ratio of 5.1, the same as Wales. To put that in perspective, London’s overall download speed only improved by 3.7.

Despite this, Scotland did not have the fastest 5G download speed overall, coming in with an average speed of 131.7 Mbps.

This means Scotland was outpaced by the West Midlands (151.4), North West region (150), Wales (137.8), Yorkshire and Humber (137.5) , as well as the East Midlands (133.6).

Delving a bit further into detail, Opensignal only included two Scottish cities in their top 15, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Edinburgh saw the most improved speeds with 5G, with a download speed improvement of 5.2, coming in third overall after Reading (5.5), and Hull (5.3).

Glasgow on the other hand saw an improvement of only 4.2, but had a much faster download speed than Edinburgh. Glasgow’s came in at 146.6 Mbps, with Edinburgh only getting 141.6 Mbps.

Both major cities still had faster broadband speeds than the overall Scottish score.

Rural vs Urban

Opensignal’s research also dove into a hot topic for broadband expansion in the UK, the rural and urban divide.

They found that rural users were largely enjoying same speed uplift as urban users thanks to 5G, but were still behind in 5G availability.

Rural users saw an increase from 24.3 Mbps to 114.0 Mbps, and increasing by a factor or 4.7.

Their urban users saw their speeds increase by a factor of 4.5, from 30.1 Mbps under 4G to a 5G speed of 134.1 Mbps.

While the speeds in urban areas are still markedly higher, the increase is relatively on part with that in rural areas.

The larger difference is actually in the availability of 5G signals across different areas.

Urban Opensignal have an active 5G connected 9.6% of the time, where as rural users only have access 6.6%.

So, while users may be able to enjoy the increased speeds when connected to 5G, they often cannot even connect to 5G.

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Similarly, this pattern plays out across the UK’s regions, with London coming out on top with their 5G availability score of 15.9%.

Scotland, on the other hand, only has a score of 7.9%, likely due to the higher proportion of rural and remote areas still waiting for 4G, let alone 5G broadband.

Work to Be Done

While Opensignal have exposed the rural and urban broadband divide yet again, there is ongoing work to address this issue.

The Shared Rural Network (SRN) programme, for instance, is aiming to increase 4G coverage across the most remote and rural areas across the country, though collaboration between the UK government and mobile network operators.

In a marked sign of progress, Ofcom has also estimated that full fibre broadband will reach over half of UK homes by March 2023.

Further, Ofcom has just confirmed that it will make millimetre wave (mmWave) spectrum across the 26 GHz and 40 GHz bands available for new mobile technology, including 5G services. This is set to improve wireless coverage and speeds.

However, earlier this year it was shown that Scotland is still lagging behind the rest of the UK in its full fibre broadband rollouts.