United Kingdom

In this report, we saw one operator cross the 90% 4G Availability mark nationally. EE maintained its lead of 5 percentage points and increased its score by over 2 percentage points since our last report to bring its 4G Availability to an award-winning score of 91.6%.

It is noteworthy that EE has been consistently improving its 4G Availability, since it’s common to see the growth stall in our measurements once an operator crosses the 80-85% mark as the 4G networks reach maturity.

While our winner’s 4G Availability score showed the largest increase in this category, we also saw O2’s score rise by more than one and a half percentage points to 85.7%. But Vodafone and 3’s score of 84.2% and 76.2% respectively showed a marginal increase of less than one percentage point since our last report.

Since our last report, Video Experience scores have remained mostly static. EE won the award in this category with a score of 68.4 points (on a scale of 100), while Vodafone trailed very closely with a score of 67.7 points. Both EE and Vodafone achieved a Very Good rating (65-75) — meaning our users on their networks enjoyed fast loading times with only occasional stalling while streaming video services on their smartphones.

On the other hand, O2 and 3 earned just a Good rating (55-65) with scores of 64.6 and 62.5 respectively. A Good rating means streamed video exhibits some loading time before playback begins and some stalling, especially at higher resolutions. Although O2’s score improved by a marginal 0.8 points, it was still the highest improvement we saw among the four operators. If O2 can continue to improve, it will move into the Very Good bracket for Video Experience in our future reports.

Interestingly, in our 4G Video Experience measurements, all four operators garnered a Very Good rating, while Vodafone was at least one point ahead of EE with the highest score of 71.7 points. This reinforces the importance of offering users high 4G Availability because EE's superior 4G Availability meant our users on its network were able to watch a video over 4G more often than on 3G, allowing the operator to grab our overall Video Experience award.

By contrast, in our 3G Video Experience measurements, all four operators received a Fair rating (40-55), with 3 leading its rival operators by at least 4 points to score 50.3 points.

In this report, we quantified the quality of consumers’ experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services using apps like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger over mobile networks in the U.K.. Our brand new measure of Voice App Experience ranks operators on a scale of 0-100 using a mean opinion score (MOS) model derived from an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) based approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters like UDP latency and UDP packet-loss.

We saw all four operators challenging each other in our first-of-its-kind metric but Vodafone won our Voice Experience award and was the only operator to pull off a Good ranking (80-87) with a score of 80.2 points. A Good rating means that many users were satisfied, while some users experienced minor quality impairments.

The remaining three operators landed an Acceptable (74-80) rating, O2 and 3 came neck and neck for second place, but the former led by 0.5 points to score 78.9 points. Despite winning all other awards, EE ended up in last place for Voice App Experience with a score of 76 points — a difference of 4 points from third-placed O2’s score. An Acceptable ranking indicates users were satisfied, while some users experienced perceptible call quality impairments.

When we look at our measurements by technology, in 4G Voice App Experience users on two operators — Vodafone and O2 — enjoyed a Good rating, with a score of 81.6 and 80.5 respectively. The remaining operators earned a Fair rating, with EE stacking up for the last place with a score of 76.5 points. In 3G Voice Experience measurements, Vodafone and 3 were rated Acceptable, while EE and O2 were rated Poor. A poor rating means many users were dissatisfied, and perceived call quality impairments.

Our users enjoyed the best Download Speed Experience on EE’s network, as the operator crushed another milestone by increasing its score by almost 2 Mbps, to pass the 30 Mbps mark. EE’s award-winning score of 31.5 Mbps gave it a convincing lead over its incumbents: our users on its network experienced download speeds at least 43% faster than Vodafone’s score of 22 Mbps, 73% faster than 3’s score of 18.2 Mbps, and two times faster than O2’s score of 15.1 Mbps.

When we look at download speeds broken down by technology, EE’s dominance continued in our 4G Download Speed measurements, where our users on EE’s network experienced speeds a clear 8 Mbps faster than its closest rival. EE’s average 4G Download Speed score of 33.7 Mbps was exceptional compared to other mobile network operators in the country where users’ 4G Download Speed Experience ranged from just 16.9 Mbps to 25.1 Mbps.

EE users’ average 3G Download Speed had dropped significantly in our last report and has not improved much in our current measurements, as the operator has been refarming the use of its 3G spectrum due to auction of new spectrum bands that have made more bandwidth available.

EE remained further ahead of the pack in 4G Upload Speed Experience with a score of 8.9 Mbps, while O2 finished last with a score of 5.7 Mbps. In our 3G Upload Speed measurements, 3’s score of 1.5 Mbps was the fastest. Again this suggests that the U.K.’s operators are starting to reallocate network resources to faster 4G networks as 3G becomes increasingly obsolete or that increasing customer data volume is causing greater congestion and slower speeds on 3G services.

We saw all four operators improve their Latency Experience — a measure of the responsiveness of the network — with an improvement of at least 2 milliseconds in the last six months. EE swept away the award in this category, and clocked the quickest response time. Our users on EE on average experienced latencies of 39.2ms. While users on O2 and Vodafone came toe-to-toe for second place with a score of 42.7ms and 42.2ms respectively. 3 remained a laggard with the slowest latency of 50.6ms — a difference of at least 8ms from all its rivals.

In 4G Latency Experience, O2's score was much closer to EE's than in our overall Latency Experience measurements. But O2's 3G Latency score was way behind its rivals, and this combined with a weaker 4G Availability score meant EE was able to secure our overall Latency Experience crown. Latency is a measure of network responsiveness, and it affects the mobile data experience in many subtle ways. The lower latency is on a network, the better the experience on a host of mobile applications and services, from web browsing to Voice-over-IP, to real-time multiplayer gaming.