Opensignal Compare Vodafone’s UK and Pan European Mobile Performance
Network benchmarking firm Opensignal, which uses crowdsourced data from its app to test broadband and mobile networks, has published a new report that shows how Vodafone’s mobile network performance compares across the UK and nine other European countries in which it operates. The Netherlands ends up being the Group Winner, with the UK placing 7th.
The study bases its comparison on their Consistent Quality (CQ) metric, which collects data on several key performance metrics (e.g. download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss and time to first byte). The results are then represented as a percentage of users’ tests that have met the minimum recommended performance thresholds to perform common tasks (e.g. video calling, uploading an image to social media, or using smart home applications without disruption etc.) – these are mostly linked to mobile broadband (4G, 5G etc.) capabilities.
Overall, Vodafone (Netherlands) came out as the Group Winner, with a score of 85.3%, six percentage points ahead of its closest sibling, Vodafone (Albania). However, unlike their Netherlands base, Vodafone (Albania) and Vodafone (Italy) are still outright winners for Consistent Quality in their home markets.
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However, it’s important to remember that studies like this don’t tell the whole story, not least because each country and operator within a group can still be very different due to variable product selections, network reach and spectrum allocations, regulation and the differing dynamics of each local economy and company history or service coverage. Put another way, we’re not sure how practically useful this all is to end-users, but it is at least interesting.
Take note that Opensignal only included Vodafone (Italy) for the sake of completeness, though the group is in the process of selling it for €8bn to Swisscom. Similarly, the planned merger between Vodafone and Three UK in the UK has yet to take place, with the market awaiting the Competition and Market Authority’s final decision. The firm also excluded Vodafone Spain as Vodafone Group sold it to Zegona in May 2024.
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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why only vodafone?
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The Opensignal study was focused on operators that form part of larger ‘Groups’. Check the link at the top.
Anyone who has taken their UK mobile to continental Europe has seen that +100Mbps in 4G+ or 200-500Mbps in 5G is quite normal. Considering that roaming functions like a VPN, the issue is not with UK mobile operators’ internet exchange link capacity, but rather with an under invested network. It will be worse after Vodafone and Three merge.
This is my experience too. However, when I checked between Vodafone UK and HU (when it was still owned by Vodafone) I reached the conckusion the value for money in the UK is not terrible. The service was worse in the UK, but also much cheaper.
It would be interesting to add to the mix how much an average subscriber needs to work to pay for it.
Couldn’t agree with you more
Totally agree that the mobile service in the UK is terrible, but look back in history. In the year 2000 when Gordon Brown was the chancellor the operators paid EUR 650 per capita for a 3G licence in the UK. In Switzerland around the same time they spent EUR 20 per capita. No European country extracted so much money from their mobile networks as the UK. I’m sure there are other factors too, but this highway robbery was the root cause.
Travelling generally shows we are short changed on network performance. I’m not sure if it’s the costs of rolling out new infrastructure in the UK or investing the minimum possible to maximise profits. I suspect it’s a combination of both.
Well said couldn’t agree with you more
taking into the account that I can barely get any proper data in Cambridge to make a google meet/zoom call or even send an iMessage let alone promising 5G for the past 4 years, I doubt we can trust Opensignal or anyone else in that matter https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/6325976793
Sure ‘CQ’ not ‘QC’?
Does anyone have experience of network prioritization for mvno’s, these types of reports never appear to cover the mvno’s and how they perform in congested areas (sorry, perhaps a bit off topic).
I feel like mobile signal in the UK has actually gotten a lot worse I’m not sure if it’s due to 2G 3G switch off but they definitely aren’t building 4 and 5G fast enough