In the report called State of Mobile Networks: UK (April 2017), OpenSignal compared all four of the UK’s top mobile networks EE, 3, Vodafone and O2. It tested results on over 30,000 devices and gathered over 500,000,000 pieces of data between December 2016 and February 2017.
The findings show that LTE signals are available more often in comparison to last round of LTE tests six months ago. Back in November LTE access sat around 50% but these new test show that figure to be over 70%.
For a while the UK showed decent 4G speeds but limited LTE availability, which is now beginning to change. Also 4G is improving the speeds consumers are receiving, in addition users where able to find 4G signals easier which means that they are spending less time on slower 3G networks.
EE came out as the clear winner across all 4G metric rankings. EE has become “the first UK operator to pass the 70% LTE signal availability threshold”, said OpenSignal. It also recorded a 4 Mbps improvement in its 4G speed measurements.
3, which typically scores well in the speed metric test is slowly losing its competitive edge as Vodafone and O2 increase 4G availability. Results show that users are connecting to speedy O2 and Vodafone 4G signals more often increasing their mobile data connection speeds. Though it should be noted that 3 did win the award for fastest download speed for 3G.
EE won the 4G latency award with an average response time of 42.2 milliseconds, as well as the award for overall download speed with a time of 23.57 Mbps, while EE tied with Vodafone for the 3G latency award.
Overall it seems that UK operators are making strides across all areas, with particularly in the availability of LTE networks. Though in general the UK is behind other countries in the consistency of access to its 4G networks, they have made considerable progress in a very short space of time.
