Primary UK Mobile Operators Beat Virtual MVNOs for Broadband Speed

Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published the result of a new study that analyses the performance of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs like EE, O2, Vodafone and Three UK) and then compares that with their many virtual operators (MVNOs like Sky Mobile, iD Mobile, Smarty etc.). Overall, the primary operators deliver faster data speeds than virtual providers.

On the surface, you might think that virtual (MVNO) operators should perform about the same as their primary parent (MNO) operators, given that they harness the same underlying network(s) as their partner. However, MVNOs don’t always gain immediate access to the latest features from their parents (e.g. 5G Standalone, Wi-Fi Calling etc.), which will vary and depends on the agreements they’ve signed.

However, there can also be other differences in terms of how network traffic is managed, capped or setup (either imposed by the parent network or directly by the virtual operator), although such details tend to be very opaque for consumers and are thus hard to assess.

In addition, mobile performance remains a difficult thing to study because end-users are always moving through different areas (indoor, outdoor and underground), using different devices with different capabilities and the surrounding environment is ever changeable (weather, trees, buildings etc.). All of this can impact service quality, and that’s before we consider any differences in network (backhaul) capacity or spectrum between locations.

Suffice to say that all of this tends to complicate any attempted comparisons between MVNOs and MNOs, since there’s a significant margin for potential variation. Despite this, Opensignal has attempted to leverage the mass of crowdsourced data they collect – via end-users on their benchmarking app and services – to identify just how much of a difference, if any, really exists between sibling virtual operators and their network parents.

The results found that virtual (MVNO) mobile operators consistently delivered slower mobile broadband (3G, 4G and 5G) speeds across the countries surveyed, although interestingly the performance gap experienced by MVNO users in the UK is much smaller than in any of the other countries tested. Primary MNOs in the UK delivered an average download speed experience of 39.2Mbps, which fell to 33.8Mbps for MVNOs. But in Mexico MNOs are around two thirds faster than MVNOs.

Opensignal also assessed the Reliability Experience of the two groups, which reflects the ability of Opensignal users to connect to and successfully complete basic tasks on mobile networks. But looking at the scores across the group of analysed countries — the differences between brand MVNOs and MNOs are not always as stark as in the case of Download Speed Experience.

Primary operators still perform better for network reliability, but in the UK you’d be hard-pressed to notice any practical difference as the scores are more or less in the same ballpark. Several of the other countries follow this trend, although there’s a bigger gap to be found in the USA, Mexico, Japan and Brazil.

The UK is known to have one of the healthiest MVNO markets in this whole group. Some 14% of all retail mobile connections in the UK come via MVNOs, although this may not be a factor in performance because Mexico also had a high level of MVNO adoption (13%) and yet saw some of the biggest performance and reliability gaps.

We’ve long suspected that primary MNOs were faster than MVNOs, but until now that has been largely based on anecdotal feedback and comparisons from consumers. Suffice to say that it’s interesting to see some hard data now being put behind this.