EE Tops OpenSignal’s 4G UK Mobile Broadband Performance Study

Crowd-sourced data experts OpenSignal have just published their Mobile Network performance study for the United Kingdom, which found that EE came top for 4G and 3G download speed and network availability. On the flip side Vodafone delivered the fastest 4G and 3G latency times.

The latest report covers the period from 1st June to 31st August 2017 and includes 51,944 test devices (e.g. Smartphones), which conducted a total of 829,136,423 measurements (e.g. speed tests). In terms of 4G download speed, EE either won outright or tied for first place in all 11 areas, but it’s noted that in this study Three UK was the main challenger (most other surveys show their performance as being much slower).

December 2017 UK Mobile Performance Results

Network Availability: 4G
1. EE 78.46%
2. O2 74.17%
3. Vodafone 71.35%
4. Three UK 57.14%

Download Speed: 4G
1. EE 28.99Mbps
2. Three UK 22.31Mbps
3. Vodafone 18.94Mbps
4. O2 15.06Mbps

Download Speed: 3G
1. EE 6.24Mbps
2. Three UK 6.12Mbps
3. Vodafone 4.98Mbps
4. O2 4.57Mbps

Latency: 4G (Milliseconds – lower is better)
1. Vodafone 43.64ms
2. EE 43.75ms
3. O2 45.38ms
4. Three UK 50.38ms

Latency: 3G (Milliseconds – lower is better)
1. Vodafone 78.27ms
2. EE 81.31ms
3. O2 84.62ms
4. Three UK 88.57ms

It’s worth contrasting this data with a similar report that was published by Tutela (here), which shows some fairly significant differences and that’s despite collecting data using a roughly similar approach. The main difference is that OpenSignal gathers data from a dedicated app, while Tutela collects it by integrating their measurement software into third-part mobile apps.

However both studies tend to give the overall win to EE, although the runners-up seem to be quite different. OpenSignal has also included a breakdown of 4G mobile download speed by region.