Opensignal Reveal UK Best 4G and 5G Mobile Networks for Q1 2023
Benchmarking firm Opensignal has their latest Mobile Network Experience Report for Q1 2023, which examines the 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) services of all four primary network operators – EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three UK – to find which delivers the best performance. Once again, Three UK and EE continued to sweep the awards.
The new report is based off crowdsourced data gathered from users on hundreds of thousands of devices (Smartphones etc.) between 1st December 2022 and 28th February 2023. The results were then processed to reveal how the primary mobile network operators compared across various categories.
The study continues to be predominantly focused upon the combined performance of 3G, 4G and 5G networks, but it also splits out some of the results for 5G-only connections. Overall, EE continued to pick up the win for most of the performance categories in the primary study, but Three UK came top for both 5G download speed, 5G upload speed and 5G network availability (i.e. % of time users spent connected via 5G).
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However, while Three UK may come top for a lot of 5G categories, it’s often a different story for other categories where EE tends to dominate. Part of the reason for this is that most 5G networks today are still hobbled by existing 4G infrastructure, but that may change once pure end-to-end (standalone) 5G networks start to expand. We’ve summarised some of the key results below.
Download Speed Experience – All Mobile Connections
(Sept 2022 Result in Brackets)1. EE 47.7Mbps (44.7Mbps)
2. Three UK 35.4Mbps (30.7Mbps)
3. Vodafone 25.9Mbps (21.2Mbps)
4. O2 19.3Mbps (16.8Mbps)
Download Speeds – 5G
1. Three UK 237.7Mbps (228.4Mbps)
2. EE 122.3Mbps (130.5Mbps)
3. Vodafone 100.6Mbps (105.2Mbps)
4. O2 75Mbps (92.3Mbps)
Upload Speed Experience – All Mobile Connections
1. EE 9.8Mbps (9Mbps)
2. Vodafone 8.2Mbps (7.1Mbps)
3. Three UK 6.2Mbps (5.6Mbps)
4. O2 5.1Mbps (4.9Mbps)
Upload Speeds – 5G
1. Three UK 17.3Mbps (15.1Mbps)
2. EE 16.9Mbps (15.9Mbps)
3. Vodafone 14.9Mbps (14Mbps)
4. O2 9.8Mbps (10Mbps)
UK Availability % – All Mobile Connections
1. Three UK 99% (98.5%)
2. EE 98.3% (97.7%)
3. Vodafone 97.3% (96.6%)
4. O2 97% (96.2%)
UK Availability % – 5G
1. Three UK 10.6% (9.1%)
2. EE 9.8% (6.8%)
3. Vodafone 9.7% (8.5%)
4. O2 8% (5.8%)
Sadly, it’s another poor showing from O2 (VMO2), which has yet to capitalise on the benefits of merging with Virgin Media’s fixed broadband line network and is continuing to lag at the bottom of far too many categories. In fact, their 5G download speeds even took a fair tumble too, although only Three UK seemed to improve their performance on that front and is now in a league of their own.
However, there are caveats to this sort of study. For example, some operators have better 4G or 5G coverage, lots of spectrum bands and more advanced networks than others. Furthermore, app-based crowdsourced data can also be impacted by any limitations or locations of the devices or plans being used, which at the same time removes the ability to adopt a common type of hardware and environment to help form a solid testing baseline.
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Suffice to say that performance testing like this may not always tell the whole story. But Opensignal is one of the better organisations at analysing such data. The result also echoes similar studies from Ookla.
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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I think 3 are in a good position once SA 5G is around. Do any of the networks have any ideas when we’ll be looking at SA 5G in the UK though? I think I’ve only seen something from Vodafone and it was a small area test from memory.
Vodafone seem to be the furthest ahead from my understanding, Three have said blatantly it isn’t their current priority. EE/O2, no clue but can probably write off O2 because they’ve always been rubbish.
Forgot to mention that the Vodafone test area wasn’t that small a trial geographically (covered some major cities including Bristol) but the device pool was quite small. Regardless, imo the first to widespread 5G SA will be the network ahead for the next generation. Guessing Vodafone/Three merger could take the cake and eat it on this one (with Three having built a lot of infrastructure and Vodafone being able to upgrade it to SA equipment)
With EE’s new speed caps on many of their plans, we should expect them to start doing worse on speed tests, right?
Yeah, what I was thinking. 25mbps limit on PAYG, 100mbps limit on Essential plans.
Vodafone are in a similar boat with the 2mbps, 10mbps and maximum mbps split
That will only affect the Ookla announcements/tests, these tests are most likely ran with SIM cards that don’t have speed caps
Within the M25 I’ve got to be honest and say that for pure coverage O2 are the best now by a country mile, especially indoors. Speeds they are slower but still good, I average around 50 and I’ve been all around London.
Outside the M25 they are very variable though, I can only recommend them for Londoners at this point
Exactly. O2 in London has excellent coverage. I get 5G nearly everywhere I go in West London. At home, work, and on my commutes.
Vodafone’s coverage is spotty and weak especially indoors. Three has painfully slow 4G in London and not enough 5G. And EE is too expensive. So my choice is clear.
I wonder if O2 will ever recover from the damage Telefonica has done to it.
I will not rely on Opensignal data. They’re using a very buggy app to measure this. I have used their app for 3 months and I decided to remove in the end after have seen their support is terrible bad, have reported few app problems and even didn’t bother to give me a message their received it or are looking into issue. Test are not relevant, same spot few minutes apart on 3 network you get in one test full speed and 2 minutes later half of that speed. The pointer on the map for tests are wrong, o made a test in center of the park and show me the test was made in some building next to the park 300m away, that even when they collecting test location form GPS. They’re app need lot of improvements before to come out with some data.
At this point I will not trust data from them.
Wish I stayed with 3 network. Switched to O2 & it was a huge mistake. Cannot wait until my contract is up.
3 is an interesting one and it really depends on where you are. I find their phone signal shocking in a lot of places around here (East Devon), but their speeds are really good especially on 5G. I have been looking at other providers who provide better phone signal, but I may hold on a bit longer seen as I have over a year of my contract left.