Streetwave UK Study Compares Mobile Coverage Across 12 Scottish Councils

Network analyst firm Streetwave has today published the results from a new study, which compared real-world mobile network (4G, 5G) coverage and mobile broadband performance across the 12 Scottish councils that have commissioned surveys. Glasgow tops the tables, while Argyll and Bute sit at the bottom.

Just to recap. Streetwave works by harnessing waste bin (refuse) collection lorries to map mobile network coverage and data speeds across various parts of the UK (e.g. here, here, here, here and here). In this setup, refuse 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 they collect is often 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, while also giving locals access to some of this data via address-based coverage checkers and interactive maps (https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/). But at the time of writing most of the 12 Scottish Councils in this study aren’t yet available.

In this case the company conducted a study of 12 councils in Scotland between November 2024 and April 2026, including with the Glasgow City Region, Argyll and Bute Council, Stirling Council, Aberdeenshire Council, Moray Council, The Highland Council, and the Scottish Futures Trust. A combination of drive testing and Streetwave data collection units mounted on council bin lorries was used across the twelve surveys.

In the following tables, Streetwave defined Basic Coverage (formerly ‘Essential Coverage’) as reflecting locations where the mobile network provides users with data speeds of above 1Mbps download, 0.5Mbps upload, and below 100ms (milliseconds) of latency (i.e. supporting only the most basic of use cases or needs).

The company also defines a second performance category for Good Coverage, which reflects locations where the mobile networks provider at least 5Mbps download, 1.5Mbps upload, and less than 50ms latency – supporting a wider range of everyday tasks including video calls, remote working, and higher quality streaming. The results were as follows.

Mobile Basic Coverage Scores by 12 Scottish Council Areas

Mobile Good Coverage Scores by 12 Scottish Council Areas

Sadly we don’t get a breakdown of the results by individual mobile operator, but the survey does note that all four of the lowest-ranked councils are rural, pointing, it says, to a “significant and persistent urban/rural divide in mobile connectivity across Scotland“. In addition, only four of the twelve surveyed councils achieve an average Basic Coverage score above 80%, and they’re all located within or immediately adjacent to the Greater Glasgow urban area.