Study Claims UK Restaurants “Ruined” by Poor Mobile Connectivity

A new survey of 2,000 mobile phone using UK adults, which was conducted by Global Wireless Solutions and OnePoll, has claimed that 11% of respondents felt their experience in a restaurant had “been ruined due to poor mobile connectivity.” Meanwhile EE and O2 offered the most reliable service while inside such eateries.

Generally it’s considered polite NOT to use your mobile phone while in a restaurant, particularly if you’re dining with family members or on a romantic evening out. On the other hand the term “restaurants” also tends to cover a multitude of different eateries, such as coffee or tea shops, and some people do go in just to do a little work while munching.

Nevertheless nattering away on a mobile is unlikely to win you too many friends among your fellow diners, although using the mobile broadband (3G, 4G or 5G) connection on your Smartphone or Laptop to check things (e.g. emails, news) is usually something that doesn’t cause annoyance, especially if you’re working or flying solo.

Aside from their consumer survey, GWS’ team of engineers also spent a month conducting “scientifically controlled tests” evaluating mobile network performance inside and outside 50 of the most popular restaurants in London. Much like their last survey, which covered the not particularly riveting but mildly comical mobile habits of gym users, this study is also fairly disposable and so we’ll just summarise the findings.

Survey Results (Mobile Connectivity in Restaurants)

• O2 and EE saw the highest rate of successful call attempts (99%) across all 50 restaurant locations tested.
• Three of the four operators had over 95% data task success rates – O2 finished top (99%), followed by Vodafone (98%) and Three UK (97%). EE struggled, however, with more than one in ten data tasks failures (87%).
• Of the Top 10 restaurants in terms of network performance, EE were fastest in five locations for download speeds, followed by O2 (three) and Vodafone (two).
• Vodafone and O2 both performed strongly for social uploads, each claiming four top 10 finishes for upload speeds for larger file tasks.
• But with dramatic swings in performance from operator to operator, location to location, it seems that networks are still struggling to extend coverage inside popular restaurant locations:
  —- At Brassiere Zedel, there was only 39% coverage across the whole restaurant – while three of the operators managed less than 20% success rates for the voice calls and data tasks.
  —- At Salt Yard (in Fitzrovia), while O2 managed 82 Mbps for the capacity test, Three only delivered 1 Mbps.
  —- At the Sky Garden’s Darwin Brasserie, Three in particular struggled for both voice call accessibility (64%) and data sessions success rate (47%).

• One in ten (11%) Brits say their experience in a restaurant has been ruined due to poor mobile connectivity.
• More than a quarter (26%) of Brits regularly browse the internet while at the dinner table.
• The same proportion (26%) have been unable to connect to the internet using mobile data when in a restaurant.
• Over a fifth (23%) have been forced to leave a restaurant to use their phone because of poor mobile service.

In addition, 18% of Brits expect all restaurants to offer free WiFi as standard. While GWS found that the overall speeds of the network were similar across mobile and WiFi, several of the restaurants tested did not provide any working WiFi at all. This was highlighted by GWS’ consumer survey that discovered many people feel they cannot rely on WiFi coverage when dining out (only 11% of Brits surveyed look for WiFi when they dine out) and 24% said they had previously been unable to connect to a restaurant’s WiFi.