Evaluating 5G in the Wild

                                                    Electrical & Computer Engineering                                                                                                                           2026 Spring Seminar Series

Abstract: Since its initial rollout in 2019, 5G has promised unprecedented data rates and ultra-low latency, with the potential to finally enable the next generation of bandwidth-intensive and latency-critical applications such as AR/VR, panoramic video streaming, cloud gaming, and connected autonomous vehicles, often dubbed as 5G “killer apps”. Yet, realizing this promise in practice has proven challenging. The use of higher frequency bands, while ensuring higher throughput, comes at the cost of reduced range and greater susceptibility to performance fluctuations. Moreover, the introduction of multiple frequency bands, the coexistence with LTE, and the availability of different deployment modes (Non-Standalone and Standalone 5G) have made the cellular ecosystem increasingly complex. While testbeds offer valuable insights, they often fail to capture the full range of real-world scenarios, as different network operators implement unique policies and configurations that are difficult to replicate in controlled environments. In this talk, I will present our research efforts over the past four years to obtain a detailed understanding of the performance of operational 5G networks via a series of large-scale measurement campaigns in more than a dozen US cities and through four cross-country road trips spanning a total of 15,000+ km. The talk will present the evolution of coverage and performance of 5G over the past 4 years, compare 5G against Starlink, which has emerged as an alternative mobile Internet access technology, particularly in remote and underserved regions, and assess the potential of both technologies to support 5G “killer apps”.

Bio: Dimitrios Koutsonikolas received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University in August 2010 and worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the same department from September to December 2010. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northeastern University and a member of the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems. Dimitrios' research interests are broadly in experimental wireless networking and mobile computing, with a current focus on 5G and Beyond networks and applications. He received an IEEE Region 1 Technological Innovation (Academic) Award in 2019, the UB Teaching Innovation Award in 2018, the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Senior Teacher of the Year Award in 2017 and the Early Career Researcher of the Year Award in 2015, the NSF CAREER Award in 2016, Best Paper Awards in IEEE GLOBECOM 2023, ACM WiNTECH 2022, ACM mmNets 2019, IEEE WCNC 2017, and SENSORCOMM 2007, and a Best Dataset Award in PAM 2021. He has served as general chair for IEEE LANMAN 2024, IEEE WoWMoM 2023, and ACM EWSN 2018, and as TPC chair for IEEE ICNP 2026, IEEE LANMAN 2023, IEEE HPSR 2023, IEEE DCOSS 2022, IEEE WoWMoM 2021, and IFIP Networking 2021. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He is a Distinguished Member of the ACM, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Member of USENIX.