RootMetrics Study Names Best UK Mobile Networks for H1 2023

Mobile benchmarking firm RootMetrics (Ookla) has published their latest biannual H1 2023 study of UK mobile network (4G and 5G) and mobile broadband performance, which sees EE (BT) continue to pick up awards across all of the categories. But in terms of 5G data speeds, Three UK remains the operator to beat.

The latest study made use of 5G-enabled Samsung smartphones (the model wasn’t disclosed) – purchased off the shelf from operator stores – to test both 4G and 5G performance across all four primary operators and across 16 of the UK’s biggest metro cities. The team then conducted a total of 538,780 tests, including at hundreds of different locations (819 of which were indoor) and while driving a total of 24,109 miles during the day and night.

The results that are shown below have then been split into several categories (network reliability, speed, data, call and text quality etc.) and each is assigned a score out of 100 (higher numbers = better). In terms of the UK-wide results, EE came top in every single category, which is in no small part due to the strength of their existing 4G network.

Overall Scores for H1 2023 (vs H1 2022)
1. EE – 95.9 (down from 96.7)
2. Vodafone – 92 (up from 91.1)
3. Three UK – 90.2 (up from 89)
4. O2 [VMO2] – 86.7 (down from 89.3)

In terms of the average (median) UK download speeds on both 4G and 5G networks combined – EE delivered the strongest data speeds of 65.1Mbps (down from 66.2Mbps a year ago), while Three UK saw a strong boost to 34.7Mbps (up from 29.9Mbps), Vodafone grew well to hit 29.4Mbps (up from 23.8Mbps) and O2 [VMO2] scored bottom with 15.5Mbps (down from 16.4Mbps).

However, the picture starts to change when we look specifically at 5G networks, where Three UK is generally the fastest mobile operator on median downloads of 202.2Mbps vs EE’s 144.6Mbps, Vodafone’s 131.5Mbps, and O2’s 75.1Mbps. But unfortunately, we don’t get any results for latency times or upload speeds, which would have been useful.

Major mobile operators in the UK have also continued to improve 5G availability since early deployments in 2019, and in 1H 2023, those improvements were especially beneficial for users of EE and Three UK, with both operators averaging 5G availability above 50% in major cities. O2 and Vodafone have also continued to expand 5G availability, with O2’s availability averaging nearly 50%, while Vodafone was closer to 40%.

Unfortunately, the RootMetrics’ report only provides bits and pieces of selected information, while we would have preferred to see detailed results for each city being published too. The data also seems to be dominated by an urban focus, which gives little weighting for poorer performance in rural areas, but then that is the caveat with this type of scientific, albeit very manual, testing – there’s not enough data to give a full UK picture.

RootMetrics UK Mobile Performance Review 1H 2023
http://preview.rootmetrics.com/../uk-mobile-performance-review-1h-2023