The Fastest Mobile Broadband Services for Liverpool, Belfast and Sheffield

RootMetrics has published another new study into the 3G and 4G based Mobile Broadband performance from all four of the UK’s major Mobile Network Operators (MNO), covering the cities of Liverpool, Belfast and Sheffield. As before EE and Three UK came top of the pack for internet download speed.

The study involved between 35,000 and 26,000 mobile performance tests in each of the three cities. But it should be noted that EE’s urban network had a distinct advantage over its rivals due to the use of 4G (LTE at 1800MHz) technology (everybody else is still stuck on slower 3G).

Broadly speaking each of the networks did similarly well for voice call and text performance, although Three UK’s call performance in Belfast was notably lower than the others. Similarly all networks exhibited a strong network reliability score of usually more than 90 out of 100. Otherwise the most obvious differences came from raw internet performance.

Liverpool – Best Operator for Mobile Internet Speeds
1. EE (DL: 23.4Mbps | UL: 14.8Mbps)
2. Three UK (DL: 7Mbps | UL: 1.8Mbps)
3. Vodafone (DL: 5.3Mbps | UL: 2.1Mbps)
4. O2 (DL: 3.5Mbps | UL: 1.4Mbps)

Belfast – Best Operator for Mobile Internet Speeds
1. EE (DL: 10.8Mbps | UL: 6.2Mbps)
2. Three UK (DL: 6.1Mbps | UL: 1.9Mbps)
3. Vodafone (DL: 4Mbps | UL: 1.5Mbps)
4. O2 (DL: 3.3Mbps | UL: 1.2Mbps)

Sheffield – Best Operator for Mobile Internet Speeds
1. EE (DL: 16.5Mbps | UL: 12Mbps)
2. Three UK (DL: 7Mbps | UL: 1.9Mbps)
3. O2 (DL: 3.2Mbps | UL: 1.5Mbps)
4. Vodafone (DL: 2.9Mbps | UL: 1.1Mbps)

RootMetrics noted that Three UK’s download performance had, across each of the cities, more than doubled since its last test in December 2012 (this will be due to their recent “ultrafast” network upgrade). Meanwhile EE’s average download speed of 23.4Mbps in Liverpool was the fastest that the study had ever recorded in the UK to date.