5G networks offered a big enhance to consumer expertise at main 2024 European occasions, with 5G customers expressing 20 p.c extra satisfaction than these utilizing 4G, in line with a survey by Ericsson’s ConsumerLab. The survey famous that two-thirds of 5G customers at these occasions reported that their connectivity expectations have been met or exceeded. The research discovered that constant app efficiency, somewhat than pace alone, was key to consumer satisfaction, highlighting the rising demand for dependable, seamless connectivity.
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5G Drives Person Satisfaction at European Occasions
Ericsson, the European telecommunications firm, famous that 2024 marked the primary 12 months the place main European occasions coincided with the targeted rollout of 5G infrastructure by operators, in anticipation of rising cell site visitors calls for. These occasions, together with the worldwide sporting occasion in Paris, the European Soccer Championship, and Taylor Swift’s Eras live shows, offered a real-world testing floor for 5G’s capabilities in delivering enhanced connectivity experiences in difficult site visitors environments.
Based on the report, the research additionally discovered that customers are keen to pay a premium for assured connectivity and app expertise throughout occasions, with attendees able to spend as much as 15 p.c extra on occasion tickets for enhanced community and app experiences.
Position of 5G in Dealing with Site visitors Surge
“5G standalone would permit operators to finest meet this requirement, by permitting them to reserve part of their community to offer assured high quality of expertise for particular customers or apps,” mentioned Ericsson.
The efficiency uplift from 5G at these occasions allowed operators to accommodate a surge in add site visitors pushed by real-time reside streaming and content material sharing, Ericsson additional added.
At Taylor Swift’s live shows, followers consumed a median of 5.4 TB of knowledge per evening, whereas on the Paris sporting occasion, community site visitors spiked by 20 p.c, with 5G dealing with half of the load at key venues. With out 5G, community overloads would have seemingly occurred, Ericsson noticed.
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Shopper Willingness to Pay
“This research clearly exhibits that the improved experiences 5G supplies are driving larger satisfaction,” mentioned Jasmeet Sethi, Head of ConsumerLab at Ericsson. “With 5G standalone, operators have a big alternative to fulfill rising consumer expectations and capitalise on premium providers for customers in search of assured high quality of expertise.”
Jenny Lindqvist, Head of Market Space Europe and Latin America, mentioned: “Wanting forward, differentiated connectivity will permit operators to cater for particular person consumer wants and expectations, for example by assured premium connectivity. This can result in even larger buyer satisfaction and create new income alternatives for the operators.”
Tanja Richter, Managing Director Know-how and Community Director at Vodafone Germany, mentioned: “We take such main occasions under consideration in our community planning and in lots of instances activate extra LTE and 5G antennas on web site. This ensures that we will course of the large quantities of knowledge concurrently and reliably, even when 1000’s of customers are on the community on the identical time.”
“Throughout this 12 months’s world sporting occasion in Paris, we witnessed unprecedented site visitors ranges. To accommodate the anticipated 11 million attendees arriving within the metropolis, we deployed quite a few short-term cell websites powered by 5G, which dealt with 25 p.c of the whole site visitors,” mentioned Anne Flore Roger, Technical Director, Cellular Community at Orange. “It is clear that with out 5G, we couldn’t have met the connectivity wants of customers at this scale.”
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5G’s Position in Enhancing Community Effectivity
Along with the ConsumerLab research, Ericsson launched a expertise paper highlighting that capability expansions by operators targeted on 5G, notably utilising 5G mid-band TDD spectrum mixed with Large MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) expertise. This method proved each cost-effective and environment friendly, considerably boosting capability and enhancing experiences for each 4G and 5G customers.
For instance, on the world sporting occasion in Paris, common throughputs for 5G customers have been as much as six instances larger than for 4G beneath common circumstances and 4 instances larger throughout peak instances, whereas mid-band 5G TDD delivered a 3.5-fold vitality effectivity enchancment per gigabyte in comparison with 4G.
Based on Ericsson, the research, which was quantitative in nature, was carried out from June to August 2024. A complete of two,404 respondents have been interviewed, with recruitment occurring by way of in-person outreach on the occasions and in on-line panels.
