Mobile Broadband: Standards
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of aligning the regulatory standard and the consumer information standard for 5G and 4G mobile coverage.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan
For the purpose of this answer, regulatory and consumer standards have been interpreted as how 4G and 5G is referred to by Ofcom in its Connected Nations reports and its consumer coverage checker, ‘Map Your Mobile’, respectively.
The ‘Map Your Mobile’ tool was updated in June 2025 to provide consumers with a definition of ‘good’ mobile coverage, agnostic of any generation of cellular communications. This was done to better reflect what users today expect to do on their mobile device when connected to a mobile network in an easy to understand way.
Network operators do refer to their products slightly differently in some cases, for example, referring to standalone 5G as 5G+ or 5G Ultra. These are marketing terms used for customers and do not reflect a different standard.
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