Results of the UK’s Largest Mobile Network Survey for the River Severn Region

Network analyst firm Streetwave has today published its results from the UK’s “largest mobile coverage survey“, which used bin lorries to test the 4G/5G (mobile broadband) network coverage and speed of each mobile operator across the River Severn Partnership Advanced Wireless Innovation Region (RSPAWIR) – reflecting 33 councils in Wales and England’s West Midlands.

The company has already spent the past few years harnessing waste (bin / refuse) collection trucks to map mobile network performance across various parts of the UK (e.g. here, here, here, here and here). In this setup, rubbish collection trucks are installed with several off-the-shelf Smartphones using special software, which run continuous network tests (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go around their routes.

The data this creates is usually considered to be more detailed and accurate than the estimates of mobile network coverage that are so often produced by mobile operators and Ofcom, which is because bin lorries need to go down almost every single road in order to conduct their collections and do so on a regular basis. Suffice to say that this makes them a uniquely useful and cost-effective resource for conducting this sort of study.

The data they collect is then used by local authorities to help identify areas that may require additional intervention in order to improve local mobile coverage and or network capacity. In addition, members of the public also gain access to some of this data via address-based coverage checkers and interactive maps (example).

The Results

The data was collected from across some 31,780km of road network within 33 councils in the west of England and eastern Wales, with the results for each area being summarised below using Streetwave’s definition of ‘Essential Coverage‘ – reflecting locations where the network provides users with speeds of above 1Mbps download, 0.5Mbps upload, and below 100ms (milliseconds) of latency (i.e. covering or allowing only the most basic of use cases / needs).

Overall EE was found to have delivered the highest ‘Essential Coverage’ – covering 80% of the region and pushing the fastest mobile broadband speeds (average download of 18.4Mbps and uploads of 5Mbps), while O2 produced the lowest result – covering 48% of the region. Vodafone ranked second with a 69% score for Essential Coverage, while Three UK came next on 50%.

However, it was noted that Essential Coverage falls as low as 35–40% in several councils, underlining the digital divide faced by many rural communities. Sadly, Streetwave’s summary didn’t include any scores for stronger types of coverage with faster speeds, but residents can access this and more data by using the digital coverage and performance checker (remember to zoom-in for the most detail or use your address).

Residents can access the coverage checker here:
https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/river-severn-partnership

Otherwise, the ‘Essential Coverage’ results for each primary council in the region can be found below.

Entire River Severn Region

EE – 80%

Vodafone – 69%

Three – 50%

O2 – 48%

Herefordshire

EE – 74%

Vodafone – 74%

Three – 59%

O2 – 57%

Worcestershire

EE – 86%

Vodafone – 75%

Three – 57%

O2 – 46%

Warwickshire

EE – 90%

Vodafone – 72%

O2 – 57%

Three – 55%

Shropshire

EE – 72%

Vodafone – 72%

O2 – 50%

Three – 48%

Powys

EE – 60%

Vodafone – 56%

O2 – 46%

Three – 35%

Staffordshire

EE – 87%

Vodafone – 74%

Three – 57%

O2 – 50%

Gloucestershire

EE – 89%

Vodafone – 71%

Three – 63%

O2 – 54%

Monmouthshire

EE – 65%

Vodafone – 60%

Three – 45%

O2 – 39%

Telford & Wrekin

EE – 74%

Vodafone – 67%

Three – 58%

O2 – 51%

One catch above is the recently approved merger between Vodafone and Three UK (VodafoneThree), which over the next few years will change the results as both networks are slowly brought closer together. Not to mention the planned coverage and performance improvements under that agreement.

The survey was also tasked with studying the coverage of Long Range Wide Area Networks (LoRaWAN), which harness a small slice of lower frequency radio spectrum (e.g. bands like 868MHz and 915MHz) to support relatively slow and low power data links. Such networks are often used to support Internet of Things (IoT) style sensors (water meters etc.), although the results of this side will be less relevant to the public and weren’t included.