Quality of Service in 4g and 5g Network: A Comparative Study of Urban and Rural Performance

Poor network quality in Nigeria, particularly in rural areas, remains a persistent challenge due to limited infrastructure, weak coverage, and sparse base-station deployment. This study evaluates and compares the Quality of Service (QoS) of 4G and 5G networks in selected urban (Asaba, Warri) and rural (Igbide, Aviara) locations in Nigeria using a simulation-based approach in OMNeT++ 5.6 with the INET framework. Key QoS metrics considered include throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and bit error rate (BER), under mobility and propagation models tailored to urban and rural conditions. Results show that 5G consistently delivers much higher throughput, stronger signal quality, and lower BER than 4G in all locations; for example, urban 5G throughput reached 429.30 Mbps versus 99.99 Mbps for 4G, and rural 5G reached 198.41 Mbps versus 49.99 Mbps for 4G. In rural scenarios, 5G also recorded markedly lower latency, jitter, and packet loss, although some urban delay-related metrics were less favorable than anticipated. The study concludes that while 5G offers clear advantages over 4G in capacity, transmission quality, and overall service delivery, realizing its full QoS benefits depends critically on deployment conditions, infrastructure readiness, and careful network optimization.