Evaluating the Real-World Performance of 5G Fixed Wireless Broadband in Rural Areas

Rural communities are often neglected in the rollout of communication infrastructure, delaying or even preventing the delivery of common digital services that are now ubiquitous in modern society. Addressing this technological gap is of paramount importance. In this paper, we analyze the performance of two new and emerging 5G networking technologies, each capable of overcoming some of the challenges present in rural environments. Our analysis is based around a series of deployments of TV White Space (TVWS) and millimetre wave (mmWave) technologies across rural parts of the UK. These deployments are enhanced with a custom designed monitoring platform that includes adaptive streaming video clients that enable the accurate assessment of end-user quality of experience. Our findings demonstrate that TVWS solutions, which operate on an unlicensed TV band, have clear potential for providing stable broadband services in those areas. Our results also show that although mmWave-based solutions can provide sub-gigabit-speed, they are vulnerable to excessive rainfall and are limited to short line-of-sight usage, making them less applicable to deployment in irregular terrain.