EE Wins Big in Opensignal Study of Best 4G and 5G UK Mobile Networks
Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has this morning published their first Mobile Network Experience Report for 2026, which measured the 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) services of all the primary network operators – EE, O2 and VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) – to determine which delivers the best performance. Overall, EE won most, but not all, of the categories.
The study is based off crowdsourced data gathered from users on hundreds of thousands of devices (Smartphones etc.) between 1st October and 29th December 2025. The results were then processed to reveal how the primary mobile network operators compared across various categories.
The study continues to be predominantly focused upon the combined performance of 4G and 5G networks, but it does also examine the speed of 5G-only connections. Overall, EE (BT) once again secured most of the performance categories in the primary study, with the operator doing particularly well to win both the ‘Reliability Experience’ and ‘Consistent Quality’ awards outright, scoring 915 points (on a 100-1000 scale) for Reliability and 78.6% for Quality.
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Meanwhile, Three UK delivered the fasted 5G download and upload speeds, as well as the highest ‘time on network’ figure, but otherwise they lagged behind their rivals. Finally, O2 (Virgin Media) scooped one award for ‘Coverage Experience’, while Vodafone failed to win anything.
We’ve summarised some of the key results below.
Download Speed Experience – All Mobile Connections
1. EE 53.2Mbps
2. Three UK 51Mbps
3. Vodafone 37.5Mbps
4. O2 32.8Mbps
Download Speeds – 5G
1. Three UK 187Mbps
2. Vodafone 130.9Mbps
3. EE 92.2Mbps
4. O2 89.9Mbps
Upload Speed Experience – All Mobile Connections
1. EE 10.4Mbps
2. Three UK 9.3Mbps
3. Vodafone 7.4Mbps
4. O2 6.4Mbps
Upload Speeds – 5G
1. Three UK 20.2Mbps
2. EE 16Mbps
3. Vodafone 14.1Mbps
4. O2 11Mbps
Time on Network %
(what proportion of time people have a network connection)
1. Three UK 99.4%
2. EE 99%
3. O2 98%
4. Vodafone 97%
UK 5G Availability %
1. EE 77.4%
2. O2 57%
3. Three UK 38.9%
4. Vodafone 29.6%
Mobile speeds remain a difficult thing to study because end-users are always moving through different areas (indoor, outdoor and underground), using different devices with different capabilities and the surrounding environment is ever changeable (weather, trees, buildings etc.). All of this can impact signal quality and that’s before we consider any differences in network (backhaul) capacity or spectrum usage between locations.
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Suffice to say, performance testing like this may not always tell the whole story, although Opensignal are one of the better organisations at analysing such data. The result also echoes similar studies from other groups, such as Ookla.
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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So do you prioritise speed or coverage? The choice is yours.
Well it depends where you are, different networks have invested in different parts of the country.
If you’re in rural Wales EE is a safer bet, whereas if you’re in a Northern town where three has multiple new masts then three’s going to be better…no network is perfect
They sure charge a premium, but for me it’s worth it. Not perfect, but the best experience of the (now) big three.
I would look at EE based MVNOs, via 1pmobile I get 50GB for £10pm.
There is always the option of using an MVNO to get the same benefits for less money. Subject to that MVNO not having restrictions – but most get the most or all of the benefits as customers on the native network.
@BenInLondon – you won’t get anywhere near the same benefits with an EE MVNO except strictly the network and even then it’s a inferior version of what EE customers enjoy
One benefit I get is free TNT full package, you won’t get that on any MVNO
That’s horse. MVNO like 1pmobile and Mozillion are just as good as the EE signal/service. I’m not looking at fancy extras like Apple Music, TNT sports etc, just the mobile service itself. It has the same bands, WiFi calling, VoLTE and as long as the MVNO isn’t over their utilisation bandwidth OR the cell tower (as it will favour EE traffic in that scenario), it’s pretty much the same, but at lower cost.
Some OTHER EE MVNO’s may have their own backend systems and call handling and they are in my opinion, inferior.
The exception is if you compare the expensive EE tariffs for SA 5G. Here do you lose out on MVNO at this time to an EE tariff because SA 5G is only on EE and not MVNOs.
Very bad indoor coverage and expensive price plans.
My EE signal in my home is always excellent. Unfortunately it helps hopping between cell towers, giving me horrendous latency, often as bad as 10 seconds.
sadly, this metric is not one they care about.
Been there… When your house sits on the border between the coverage areas of two cell towers, it’s a nightmare! Especially when one of them is 4G only and the other 5G enabled.
I live on the edge of 5 different sectors, data works fine but I can almost predict the voice handovers between WiFi & mobile. It shouldn’t be a problem, but a curiosity!
I’ve always found EE to be the better option for me. Both indoors and outdoors. The only issue I have with them in my work location but it is bad for Three/Vodafone too. Only o2 is ok there but that’s because the cell site is just opposite.
I only pay £13 for unlimited essentials but as a PlusNet customer I got it cheap.
O2 signals are best but speeds are rubbish, Vodafone and Three historically bad for speeds for me. No 5G either indoors for those.
So id rather pay more if needed for EE
Signal alone means nothing. Quality of the backhaul network and latency matters as a whole. And on that, EE excels, while all others are frequently congested despite a good signal. We need QoS enforcement on mobile.
The fact you see EE excelling while others are congested should tell you that the problem isn’t lack of QoS, but a lack of capacity deployed (spectrum, backhaul, etc). What we need is networks to upgrade their sites properly, not to do just the bare minimum.
QoS helps for some tasks, but it can’t work miracles if there’s not enough capacity deployed.
EE are by far the best network I’ve ever been with, I also get a superb deal on the Full Works plan.
Had a Virgin media outage last year that lasted for 9 days and using my SIM in router it ran the entire house flawlessly for those 9 days
And customer service are brilliant
After 4 years on EE, I can confirm it’s the fastest but I’m still not going back there. I prefer stability and reliability, which EE lacks. And don’t even get me started on their CS!
I switched to EE years ago and for good reason.
Having been with all (now) big three networks, EE has been the most consistent.
I remember being on slow2, having 5 bars and not being able to open an email – I’m sure not much has changed since.
Three always had bad latency and Vodafone always kept dropping to GPRS for no reason at all.
Still this problem with Vodafone but dropping to Edge which isn’t much better, looking at Mozillion myself for a EE mnvo
I bet the speed was recorded on a three cell tower , cos ee and three have to share towers lol. , EE only has 5g in london rest is three proping the old crap network up lol
EE customers cannot use a “three tower” and vice versa. Where there has historically been infrastructure sharing, this is about physical assets only. EE and 3 still need to install their own radio equipment and connect it back to their own networks.
If they actually did share infrastructure in the way you claim (this hasn’t really been true since the 3G days, and it was a joint partnership) then it would follow that they’d have similar coverage and performance, but clearly they don’t.
I don’t live in London. EE 5G is everywhere, 3 is not. How would 3 be “propping up” the coverage in my area?
Mentioned already, but EE & 3 do not have any formal network sharing (lol) – they had passive infrastructure shared under MBNL but this didn’t extend to any common active kit (lol) which was only ever pooled for 3G
Oh sorry I forgot to mention… lol
BT Ivor may be surprised, but I’ve found EE to be the best performing out of all the networks in various areas I travel to. Admittedly, they still have work to do on upload speeds as they can be appalling, but no worse than the other operators.