StreetWave Name Three UK Fastest for Mobile Data in Edinburgh
Mobile network analysts at Streetwave have published the results of a new real-world benchmark into mobile network performance across the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, which concluded that Three UK delivered the “fastest network” (mobile broadband) across most homes. But Vodafone had the fastest average upload speeds.
Streetwave typically adopts a more scientific approach with their studies (i.e. they don’t use crowdsourcing), which collects data on an address-by-address basis and is designed to represent real-world consumer experience. The study is also network generation agnostic, meaning they don’t prioritise any connection technology type (2G to 5G) and allow each operator to manage them in the same way a consumer would be managed by the network.
The research took place between the 17th November and the 14th December 2023. Measurements from all network generations (2G-5G) were recorded, collecting a total of 444,498 data points. Data was collected across the vast majority of the road network of Edinburgh.
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The survey found that Three UK had the fastest average download speeds across the city (23.6Mbps) and was the fastest network across the most homes in their sample (40,449 homes), while EE came in second place with 35,292, followed by Vodafone (17,085) and O2 (15,162) was at the bottom. On the flip side, Vodafone delivered the fastest average upload speeds across the city (6.1Mbps).
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 and Linkedin.
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Good to see that they’re being generation agnostic, most users don’t care what G it is they just want the page to load!
But I do feel that average is a poor way to measure things here, I’d like to also see the spread, consistency is important here, I’d rather a provider where I know I will always get around 50mbps compared to one that 50% of the time gives me 100mbps and 50% of the time give me 1mbps. Despite the latter having a higher ‘average’ (50.5mbps)
O2 performing a bit better nice to see
That’s a huge lie, I’ve started my 2 year monthly unlimited data contract a few months ago with three mobile and the connection throughout the city and city centre is the worst I have seen. Three is the worst SIM card ever, don’t buy this BS
POV You don’t understand that your anecdote doesn’t reflect the data and that’s okay. Use what’s best for you.
This is our experience too. 3 UK data utterly unusable.
If Three deliver a speed of 600Mbs in a few locations, this will boost its average across the city.
But at the end of the day, how many mobile users actually need more than say 30Mbs download speeds on their mobile?
You can stream 4K on your device over 30Mbs if you really wanted to.
Far better to have 30Mbs ubiqtous across a city than 600Mbs in isolated pockets and really poor coverage everywhere else.
O2 for example, are always reflected poorly in these things in the context that everyone is obsessed with highest speeds, but what is their coverage, capacity, and performance consistency? I suspect that while they may have the lowest averages, their network will be a lot more usable than Three.
We know Edinburgh is in Scotland, wow haha
Sigh. So, websites are global, thus when we’re communicating in articles it’s necessary to clarify a bit more because not everybody visiting this site lives in the UK or knows the ‘what and where’ of a location. This also helps the search engines to place / index by geographic relevance of the content.
As always, a lot more thought goes into these things than you may think, which is why it helps to put yourself in the position of viewing things from the perspective of a much wider audience.