Opensignal Compares 4G and 5G Performance of Three UK and Vodafone
Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published an updated study that compares Vodafone and Three UK’s mobile broadband performance in terms of 4G Download Speed and “Excellent Consistent Quality“, which is intended to help provide an indication for how the recently completed merger might impact things.
In case anybody has forgotten, the combined VodafoneThree network plans to invest £11bn to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next 10-years (here, here and here). This aims, among other things, to reach 99.95% of the UK’s population with their 5G Standalone (5G SA) network by 2034.
The combined network will also be built at speed, with the 5G SA build plan being front-loaded so that, by the end of the third year, it will hit 90% population coverage from a current baseline of 47%. Around 71% of the UK population (circa 50 million) will have access to their fastest 5G speeds by the end of year one.
Advertisement
In addition, within another week or so, through the sharing of combined spectrum, some 7 million Three UK and SMARTY customers are also expected to receive an improvement in 4G data speeds (mobile broadband) of up to 20% (average). In the new analysis, Opensignal leverages crowdsourced data collected from users of the two networks to look at existing performance and speculate on how this might change in the future.
For example, the data reveals that, nationally, Three UK’s users already see faster 4G download speeds than those on Vodafone – scoring 30.1Mbps vs Vodafone’s 28.6Mbps. But Three UK’s users lag Vodafone and the national average on the consistency of their experience (Three scores just 68.6% for ‘Excellent Consistent Quality’, compared to 75.4% for Vodafone and 72.5% for the national average).
However, the introduction of roaming between the two networks, as well as the deployment of their combined spectrum holdings (pending divestments to O2) and VodafoneThree’s promised rapid roll-out of 5G SA access coverage could cause a massive shift in the future.
“Together, these changes could reshape the U.K.’s mobile market, shifting the balance of Opensignal’s experience awards. For example, EE has long dominated our national award tables due to its broad spectrum holdings. Similarly, Three-UK’s strong 5G speed performance stems from its large 3.4–3.8GHz holdings acquired in the UK Broadband Ltd deal,” said Opensignal.
Advertisement
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.
« Openreach Summarises New ONTs for UK FTTP Broadband Lines UPDATE2
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person’s legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
I’m with Three – There are two of their ugly 5G masts less than 500 meters from my home, yet speed it much quicker when I turn off my phones 5G capability.
In 2019, I was told I could wet shave Kevin Bacon on top of a mountain whilst I walked down my street, what on earth happened to 5G?
Kevin Bacon was advertising EE.
This made me chuckle, I love tech and connectivity but completely agree 5G has been a disaster.
I am also surprised the public hasn’t gone crazy regarding the design of these 5G mast. They look appalling and I wouldn’t accept one near me.
Considering that Three’s 5G is still 5G NSA (4G bands + a 5G/NR band), it’s unlikely that speeds would be faster with just 4G on any modern phone. Sounds like a bs if I’m being honest.
Regarding Kevin Bacon’s wet shave, have you considered using “his” network (and pay their prices)? The promise was made by EE, after all.
You only get Kevin Bacon with EE, must be where you went wrong.
You almost certainly don’t have 5G yet, even when you see a 5G icon on your phone, it likely isn’t 5G, it’s just your operator stuck a 5G antenna on their existing 4G cell site, infrastructure and backhaul, so it doesn’t give you the advertised benefits of 5G
You should see a difference as 5G SA rolls out over the next decade, but by then – they’ll be selling 6G
Also, Kevin Bacon advertises EE, which consistently has a far, far higher quality of connection than Three (you get what you pay for)
As always, the engineers build a great product, the advertising folks engage in epic hyperbole. Couple that with the networks spending too much on acquiring spectrum and that leads to not enough money to spend on building a stand alone network and you have our current situation! If Ofcom didn’t set the prices so high maybe the networks could have found more money to build SA networks from the get go. Cest La Vie!
The Huawei ban really impacted UK’s TG SA rollout, Ericsson, Samsung etc just couldn’t deliver at the same scale Huawei was in a position to at the key time of rollout
Coupled with profiteering from these operators, you’ve a recipe for rising prices, reduced investment & rising profits
Interesting numbers. It will be worth watching how these numbers evolve.
During my (limited) testing, Three have been alright in many places. Compare this to Vodafone who, since switching off 3G, have had more congestion in the 4G band and quite a few areas with weak signals. If my policy wasn’t to disable 2G on every phone I get, I’m sure I’d be seeing 2G in areas I used to see 3G in, which is a big downgrade and worse overall experience.
Mark mentioned SMARTY in the article but what about the other MVNOs using three’s network? Will IDmobile customers also benefit from the network investment? I assume so.
The VF FAQs claim that they all benefit. Still to be proven, obviously..
Excellent news. Looking forward to the speed improvements, 3 5G is the fastest, I’ve see come getting 1.5GBPS on Speedtest on the 3 POW’s! Where I live we have no 3 5G planned yet but we do have Vodafone 5G planned in other nearby areas. I plan to set Smarty up as my second line when 1P get their eSim’s launched.