If the problem in your area is the backhaul, then you're right, 5G won't help. However, at least in some areas, Three's problem isn't the backhaul. It's too man

If the problem in your area is the backhaul, then you're right, 5G won't help. However, at least in some areas, Three's problem isn't the backhaul. It's too many customers and not enough wireless capacity for 4G (and even 3G): https://pedroc.co.uk/content/uk-commercial-mobile-spectrum https://pedroc.co.uk/content/uk-commercial-mobile-spectrum I've been testing Smarty (Three) and Vodafone in London. Almost every time Vodafone's LTE is faster and more stable than Three's LTE. On 5G it's different: not only Three has better coverage, but their speeds are often twice as fast. According to "Network Signal Guru" (needs root and Android, but it's an interesting app), Three uses 100Mhz of the N78 band while Vodafone only deploys 50Mhz. Not a surprise as they have more 3.5GHz spectrum than Vodafone, but shows the advantage they have on 5G. By the way, I went to one of your early comments and you also mentioned EE. In the UK, networks share some infrastructure. EE and Three have MBNL ( https://mbnl.co.uk/ https://mbnl.co.uk/ ) while Vodafone and O2 have CTIL ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTIL ). If you live somewhere with shared towers/fibre and there are backhaul limitations, this may explain why you can't get good speeds on both EE and Three.