EE UK Tops Opensignal Q3 Mobile Benchmark, But Lose Grip in 5G

Opensignal’s latest Q3 2021 Mobile Network Experience Report, which uses crowd-sourced data to measure the 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) performance of all four primary operators (EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three UK) to determine which delivers the best service, has given most of the awards to EE. Except when only looking at 5G.

The new report is based on crowd-sourced data gathered from users on hundreds of thousands of devices (Smartphones etc.) between 1st June 2021 and 29th August 2021. The results were then processed to reveal how all of the primary Mobile Network Operators (MNO) compared across various categories.

The main study is predominantly focused upon the combined 4G and 5G results from existing operators, but we also get a second study that examines 5G performance (i.e. removing the 4G specific results).

Overall, EE won most of the performance categories in the primary study, except for Voice App Experience and Games Experience (measured on a scale of 0-100, this analyses how multiplayer gaming experience is affected by latency, packet loss and jitter etc.), where they were joint winners with Vodafone.

However, the results from Opensignal’s 5G focused study (i.e. removing the 4G specific results) were much more divided, with most categories having no overall winner. But EE did still come top for both download speed and upload speed. We should point out that 5G upload speeds are still being driven by 4G services (until Standalone 5G is fully adopted), hence why those results aren’t massively better than 4G.

The Results

In our summary, we’ve opted to only showcase the familiar categories of download speed, upload speed and availability (i.e. % of time spent connected to 4G or 5G). We’ve also compared these scores with those from Opensignal’s previous report

Download Speed Experience (4G+5G)

1. EE 44Mbps (39Mbps)
2. Three UK 25.2Mbps (19.3Mbps)
3. Vodafone 21.6Mbps (21Mbps)
4. O2 17.1Mbps (17.3Mbps)

Download Speed Experience (5G)

1. EE 131.9Mbps (140Mbps)
2. O2 110.9Mbps (128.9Mbps)
3. Three UK 103.9Mbps (115.9Mbps)
4. Vodafone 73.3Mbps (103.1Mbps)

Upload Speed Experience (4G+5G)

1. EE 9.7Mbps (9.1Mbps)
2. Vodafone 7.4Mbps (8.1Mbps)
3. Three UK 6.3Mbps (6.8Mbps)
4. O2 5.4Mbps (6.7Mbps)

Upload Speed Experience (5G)

1. EE 13.8Mbps (16.4Mbps)
2. Vodafone 12.3Mbps (14.7Mbps)
3. Three UK 11.6Mbps (12.7Mbps)
4. O2 9.3Mbps (10Mbps)

4G UK Availability %

1. EE 93.6% (95.3%)
2. Vodafone 86.4% (89.6%)
3. O2 83.6% (89.3%)
4. Three UK 81.2% (83.9%)

5G UK Availability %

1. Three UK 7.4% (6.5%)
2. Vodafone 6.4% (4.6%)
3. EE 5.5% (5.5%)
4. O2 4.7% (3.3%)

Interestingly, 5G speeds seem to have fallen since last time, which might reflect a rise in take-up by consumers (more strain on network capacity) and the fact that most operators haven’t yet had a chance to harness Ofcom’s recently auctioned spectrum bands (e.g. 700MHz and 3.6-3.8GHz).

5G availability also showed an expected improvement for Three UK, Vodafone and O2, although EE was oddly unchanged on 5.5%. A rise in 5G availability may naturally decrease 4G availability, since people will be spending more and more time on 5G as UK network coverage and related Smartphone adoption expands.

But there are caveats to this sort of study. For example, app-based crowd-sourced data could be impacted by any limitations or locations of the devices or package being used, which at the same time removes the ability to adopt a common type of hardware and environment to help form a solid baseline for testing. Some operators may also have better 4G or 5G coverage, better fibre capacity and more spectrum bands than others.

Suffice to say that performance testing like this may not always tell the whole story, but Opensignal are one of the better organisations at analysing such data.