Mobile operator O2 (Telefonica UK) has today announced that, since April 2020, they’ve increased their 4G based (mobile broadband) network capacity in over 33,109 postcodes across London, which they say includes some of the city’s most residential boroughs. More capacity tends to improve data speeds by reducing congestion.
The operator points to independent crowd sourced data from Tutela, which appears to support O2’s recent work, not least by highlighting that many boroughs with upgraded postcodes have experienced improved network throughput in September 2020, including Newham (+14.7%), Ealing (+12.2%), Barnet (+7.5%), Hounslow (+7.4%) and Haringey (+7.2%).
The above figures represent the percentage difference of O2’s Median 4G downlink throughput on Android devices in September 2020, when compared with February and March 2020. Separately, albeit during the same period, O2’s engineers also made over 3,000 visits to keep local sites across London online.
Brendan O’Reilly, CTO of O2, said:
“Throughout this pandemic, connectivity has proved to be an essential lifeline for customers, businesses and communities alike. We continue to invest in delivering the best possible network for our customers where and when they need it most as we play our part in helping to Rebuild Britain.”
End.
Perhaps now people will get 2Mbps instead 1Mbps.
So they’ve installed about 5 new lamppost sites then? Hardly warrants the fanfare from O2.
Announcing coverage by “33,000 postcodes” feels quite misleading and is an unclear method in my opinion.
This network is truly appalling for data throughput at times, data rates so slow (afternoons especially) that even a short Apple iMessage can take several minutes to send.
Speedtests of 0.55 Download and 0.01 Upload are absolutely nothing to be proud of.
Clearly O2’s statisticians are unable to identify these poorly performing sites?