By updating the equipment of its mobile telephone network, Free is improving its 5G speeds, with an increase of up to 14%. A performance improvement that concerns only part of the antennas.

By updating the equipment of its mobile telephone network, Free is improving its 5G speeds, with an increase of up to 14%. A performance improvement that concerns only part of the antennas.

Good news for Free Mobile customers equipped with a 5G-compatible smartphone: the operator has just announced an increase in speeds on its telephone network. An increase of up to 14% that we owe to an update of equipment across the entire network. As the Free 1337 account explains in the message posted on Twitter, this development makes it possible to exploit a bandwidth of 70 MHz instead of the 60 MHz used until now, thus conveying more data. But beware, this improvement only concerns the 3.5 GHz frequency band, and not those of 700 MHz and 2100 MHz also used by the operator. However, as the report of Arcep (from its full name, the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution, more commonly nicknamed “telecoms policeman”), the Free 5G antennas operating this famous band only represent a part of the operator sites – to be exact, 2,384 out of a total of 13,470 in mainland France according to the statement of December 31, 2021. This means that depending on their geographical location, Free subscribers will not systematically benefit from this higher speed.

In fact, you should know that, as with 4G, mobile operators operate several frequency bands – or carrier frequencies, more precisely – for 5G. In addition to the 700 MHz (B28), 800 MHz (B20), 1800 MHz (B3) and 2100 MHz (B1) bands already used by 4G, they can rely on the 3.5 GHz band, known as the “frequency in gold” because it is what allows the best speeds. When 5G frequencies were allocated by Arcep in 2020, Free was entitled to a bandwidth of 80 MHz around 3.5 GHz – against 90 MHz for Orange, 80 MHz for SFR and 70 MHz for Bouygues Telecom. But the operator was content to use only 60 MHz, preferring to rely on the other bands – in principle reserved for 4G – in order to claim wider coverage of the territory, to the detriment of speed. A technical and/or strategic choice which resulted in placing it behind its competitors in terms of pure performance.

The increase in speed made possible by updating its network equipment should allow Free to regain color in the field of speed. By still keeping a margin of progress with the passage, at an undetermined date, to 80 MHz. Waiting; subscribers to the Free Mobile unlimited plan who have a 5G smartphone will not complain about this small increase in speed, especially since they were able to take advantage of 5G without any additional cost compared to the 4G plan, as the operator points it out.