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

Poor network quality remains a major challenge in Nigeria, especially in rural areas where limited infrastructure, weak coverage, and lower base-station density reduce the Quality of Service (QoS) experienced by users. Although 5G promises major improvements over 4G, its comparative performance across urban and rural Nigerian environments is still not sufficiently understood. This study therefore evaluated and compared the QoS performance of 4G and 5G networks in selected urban and rural locations in Nigeria. A simulation-based methodology was adopted using OMNeT++ 5.6 with the INET framework. Four locations were considered: Asaba and Warri as urban environments, and Igbide and Aviara as rural environments. The analysis focused on key QoS metrics, namely throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and bit error rate (BER). Different mobility and propagation models were used to reflect the characteristics of urban and rural deployment conditions. The results showed that 5G consistently achieved much higher throughput, stronger signal quality, and lower BER than 4G in all study locations. In the urban areas, 5G throughput reached 429.30 Mbps compared to 99.99 Mbps for 4G, while in the rural areas it reached 198.41 Mbps compared to 49.99 Mbps. In addition, 5G recorded markedly lower latency, jitter, and packet loss in the rural scenarios, although some urban delay-related metrics were less favorable than expected. The Research concludes that 5G offers clear advantages over 4G in capacity, transmission quality, and overall service delivery, but its full QoS benefits depend on deployment conditions, infrastructure readiness, and network optimization.