RootMetrics Reveals 4G Mobile Coverage by Operator in the UK’s Biggest Cities
RootMetrics has today published the results from their latest study, which reveals the 4G (LTE) network coverage of the United Kingdom’s four primary mobile operators, across 14 of the biggest cities. Unsurprisingly EE does the best in 13 of the 14 metro areas tested.
The new data makes for a good complement to RootMetrics recent H2 2016 report into the Mobile Broadband performance (speed) of 4G networks across a similar selection of UK cities (here). However we note that the H2 study reported speeds for 16 cities, while today’s coverage study excludes Hull and Newcastle due to a lack of data.
Overall EE provided 4G coverage at rates of 90% or higher in 11 of the 14 markets tested, while bottom dweller Three UK failed to deliver 4G coverage beyond 90% in any of the metro areas tested. Three UK’s highest rate of 4G coverage came in Manchester, at just 81%. By comparison both Vodafone and O2 were broadly delivering much closer coverage to EE’s level, but still between 4-26 percentage points behind.
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| Market | EE 4G% | O2 4G% | Three 4G% | Vodafone 4G% | Land mass sampled |
| Belfast | 98.1% | 94.6% | 75.1% | 91.9% | 30.6% |
| Birmingham | 98.3% | 89.6% | 76.3% | 89.0% | 44.0% |
| Bristol | 92.2% | 69.0% | 56.7% | 68.1% | 37.7% |
| Cardiff | 86.5% | 60.4% | 43.1% | 60.4% | 42.8% |
| Coventry | 96.1% | 87.1% | 67.2% | 87.4% | 33.0% |
| Edinburgh | 89.1% | 86.6% | 55.0% | 88.4% | 26.0% |
| Glasgow | 89.4% | 77.1% | 58.4% | 77.2% | 22.2% |
| Leeds and Bradford | 90.0% | 80.8% | 61.0% | 82.1% | 20.4% |
| Leicester | 95.6% | 83.8% | 63.2% | 82.1% | 25.8% |
| Liverpool | 99.8% | 94.0% | 80.9% | 92.9% | 68.4% |
| London | 90.7% | 77.3% | 65.1% | 76.5% | 30.2% |
| Manchester | 99.0% | 94.8% | 81.7% | 92.6% | 46.7% |
| Nottingham | 95.6% | 81.2% | 72.1% | 80.5% | 38.0% |
| Sheffield | 96.2% | 86.3% | 71.4% | 85.9% | 31.5% |
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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