Connect with us

Published

on

Testing out internet speeds on an Oppo Reno 5G smartphone with EE’s network.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

London falls far behind other major European cities when it comes to the quality of its 5G connection, according to a report shared with CNBC.

The findings from fixed and mobile network benchmarking firm MedUX found that London ranked 10th for 5G quality of experience in Europe, out of a group of 10 cities that includes Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, and Lisbon.

The German capital had the best 5G experience overall, which MedUX attributed to Berlin’s outperformance in areas like network consistency across different levels of applications and overall low latency.

“They are very good at doing things properly,” Rafael Galarreta, chief marketing officer of MedUX, told CNBC in an interview.

“They are the best in particular worlds,” he added, highlighting the city’s prowess in video streaming and data for over-the-top media platforms.

MedUX uses robots to quality assess fixed and mobile wireless internet broadband, identifying and resolving network issues. The company works with telecom providers, regulators, and enterprises to benchmark and monitor networks.

According to MedUX, Berlin has the best 5G coverage of any European city overall, according to MedUX, with a 89.6% reach. It is also the best city overall for 5G streaming, with average latency of less than 40 milliseconds.

Berlin, Barcelona, and Paris scored the highest among European cities on MedUX’s overarching 5G quality benchmark. Lisbon, Milan and Porto were the runners up.

London, on the other hand, was close to the bottom of the ranking for European 5G networks. According to MedUX, nearly 77.5% of the city’s population has 5G on their devices now, below the urban average.

London also performs badly on downlink speeds, with MedUX data showing the city gives users an average download speed of 143 megabits per second (Mbps), compared to 528 Mbps for Lisbon, 446 Mbps for Porto, 326 Mbps for Barcelona.

Munich in Germany, the second-worst city for 5G downlink speeds, had average download speeds of 259 Mbps.

“The U.K. is struggling for several reasons,” Galaretta said. “We already spoke about the macro things, but the two most important dimensions in which the U.K. mobile networks are lagging behind is speed and accessibility, and network responsiveness.”

Network responsiveness, Galaretta said, affects latency, which impacts data-intensive applications like online gaming — and in particular cloud gaming, which provides constant delivery of games to an end user through a remote data center.

Huawei ban to blame?

Figures shared by MedUX also show a clear picture of how British carriers are underperforming their European peers on 5G quality.

EE ranks 12th out of the top 36 carriers across European markets for 5G network quality of experience, data MedUX shared with CNBC shows. Vodafone ranks 24th, while Three is 33rd. O2 comes in at number 36. These companies and EE owner BT weren’t immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC on Tuesday.

Galaretta highlighted the U.K.’s decision to ban Huawei from its 5G network as a possible reason behind the poor performance on 5G network quality.

The U.K. began rolling out 5G networks in 2019, as British carriers EE and Vodafone launched super fast data plans in the country for the first time.

It has faced struggles, after the U.K. government in the summer of 2020 announced Huawei would have to ban 5G equipment from its network completely by 2027. British carriers, which have heavily criticized the decision due to disruption to their rollouts, have been racing to dump Huawei gear in their core and non-core networks.

“This delayed deployment has likely affected overall coverage, availability, and user experience, particularly considering that the Huawei ban came after the initial rollout had already commenced,” Galaretta said.

Galaretta noted that quantifying the effects of the U.K.’s Huawei ban is a hard task, since MedUX’s research primarily focuses on measuring service quality and experience for end-customers.

Another factor at play, Galaretta noted, is the impact of industry mergers and acquisitions, along with the resulting pushback from regulators, which have led to disruptions to certain installations.

MedUX tests 5G quality across a number of different environments, including through radio technology samples and multi-thread download speed tests based on public content delivery networks.

It also takes into account the quality of usage of a range of different online services, including X, Facebook, YouTube streaming, the ease of accessing a certain URL, requests to gaming servers and navigating websites accessed through a Google Chrome browser.

Huawei competes with network infrastructure giants like Ericsson in Sweden and Nokia in Finland.

Despite Huawei’s ban from the U.K., the Chinese telecoms vendor still reportedly has a large presence in the country’s 5G network. According to a report from Strand Consulting, gear from Chinese vendors — among which Huawei is the only one active in Britain — still makes up some 41% of the U.K. 5G network.

Continue Reading

Technology

Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

Published

on

By

Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

WATCH: AI-led bull market set to continue, says Wells Fargo’s Ohsung Kwon

AI-led bull market set to continue, says Wells Fargo's Ohsung Kwon

Continue Reading

Technology

YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement

Published

on

By

YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.

The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter from Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.

“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.

YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.

Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.

This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”

In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.

Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.

In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”

YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.

YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.

Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.

YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.

In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Google adds Gemini to Chrome for all users in push to bolster AI search

Continue Reading

Technology

Amazon to close all of its Fresh grocery stores in UK

Published

on

By

Amazon to close all of its Fresh grocery stores in UK

People walk past an Amazon Fresh store in Washington, DC, on August 26, 2021.

Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

Amazon plans to close all of its Fresh supermarkets in the U.K., in the latest recalibration of its grocery strategy.

The company said in a Tuesday blog that it’s preparing to close all 19 of its Fresh U.K. stores, “following a thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery.” Five of the Fresh locations are expected to be converted into Whole Foods stores, Amazon said.

Amazon opened its first Fresh location outside the U.S. in London in 2021, about a year after it debuted the store concept in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Fresh stores offer cheaper prices and more mass-market items compared to Whole Foods, the upscale supermarket chain Amazon acquired for $13.7 billion in 2017. Many of the stores also feature Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology.

The Fresh store pullback in the U.K. comes as Amazon has continued to adjust its grocery ambitions. The company has slowed expansion of its Fresh grocery chain and Go cashierless stores in the U.S. It still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.

Read more CNBC tech news

At the same time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items like canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks.

Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.

The company on Tuesday also said that it plans to offer same-day delivery of groceries, including perishable items, in the U.K. beginning next year.

WATCH: Amazon launches its Zoox robotaxis in Las Vegas

Exclusive: Amazon just launched its Zoox robotaxis in Las Vegas and we took a ride

Continue Reading

Trending