Study Reveals State of Mobile Broadband Coverage in Ceredigion, Wales

Mobile network analyst firm Streetwave has revealed that only EE (BT) and Vodafone UK were able to provide “Good Coverage” across more than 50% of Ceredigion’s road network in Wales. The data reflects the next batch of results from their work with Growing Mid Wales (GMW), which uses bin lorries to map local network (4G, 5G etc.) coverage and broadband speeds.

The use of bin collections to map mobile coverage and data performance recently become quite popular (here, here, here and here). In this setup, refuse collection vehicles are installed with four off-the-shelf Smartphones using software from Streetwave on top, which run continuous network tests (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go about their routes.

The data this creates is thus much more accurate than the flaky estimates of mobile network coverage that are so often produced by mobile operators and Ofcom, which is because bin lorries need to go down almost every single road in order to conduct their collections and do so on a regular basis. Suffice to say that this makes them a uniquely useful and cost-effective resource for conducting this sort of study.

The downside is that the initial data being released to the public is quite limited and only offers a very broad overview. Streetwave typically deems an operator to have delivered “Good Coverage” where they provide users with mobile broadband performance of at least 5Mbps download, 2Mbps upload, and below 40ms (milliseconds) latency.

The above is said to reflect speeds where “most ordinary use cases”, including internet browsing, video streaming or conference calls, can be performed. The company also defines a second level for “Essential Coverage“, which defines as at least 1Mbps download, 0.5Mbps upload speeds and below 100ms latency – enough for only the most basic of modern online tasks (i.e. trying to use the modern internet at such speeds is painful).

Overall, EE was found to have delivered the highest level of “Good Coverage” across Ceredigion (54%) and they were followed closely by Vodafone (51%), then O2 (44%) and finally Three UK (34%). This means that the average level of Good Coverage between the operators in Ceredigion was 46% – higher than the average of 40% found in Powys back in May 2024 through the same body of work (here).

As for Essential coverage..

Level of Essential Mobile Coverage in Ceredigion (July 2024)

Relevant to the £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) programme, Streetwave also identified large areas affected by total not-spots in the region. There was not a single operator who could deliver download speeds above 5Mbps across 12% of Ceredigion. Likewise, there was not a single operator who could deliver upload speeds above 2Mbps across 31% of Ceredigion.

GMW will soon make the data from its ongoing surveys across Powys & Ceredigion available to view for the public through their own free to use mobile coverage checker (we’d also love to see a visual interactive map of performance). This will allow residents and businesses to check the download and upload speeds of the primary mobile networks outside of their own addresses.

The results from this project will now be used by GMW to identify digitally excluded communities across Mid Wales, which could help them to deliver future connectivity interventions.

UPDATE 8:02am

After a request, Streetwave have kindly also furnished ISPreview with results that show the average mobile broadband speeds of each operator across Ceredigion.

EE:
19.8 Mbps download
3.6 Mbps upload

Three UK:
13.3 Mbps download
2.1 Mbps upload

Vodafone:
10 Mbps download
3.2 Mbps upload

O2:
8.4 Mbps download
2.8 Mbps upload