EE is the only operator in the U.K. to win any of our city awards outright, across all six of our measures of the mobile experience that we have assessed at the city-level. The operator racked up 64 wins out of a possible 102 and tied for the remainder. The other operators at best jointly won some Opensignal city awards.
In 16 out of the 17 cities that we have investigated in this report, our EE users observed an Excellent Video Experience, while the same was only true for our O2 and Vodafone users in Sheffield and Slough, respectively. In most of the cities studied, our 3, O2 and Vodafone users enjoyed a Very Good Video Experience, though our 3 users in Bristol and Hull had to settle for a Good Video Experience instead.
Turning to Games Experience, only the score reported by our users on EE’s network in Slough — 85.1 — placed in the Excellent category. Our EE users had a Very Good Experience in 15 out of 17 cities, while their Vodafone counterparts did so in 12 and there were only two cities — Nottingham and Slough — where our O2 users did so. While there were five cities in which our 3 users reported a Fair Games Experience, there were 12 in which they observed a Poor one.
Looking at Voice App Experience, EE won outright in two cities — Birmingham and London. It drew in 10 more with Vodafone and there were three-way ties between these two operators and O2 in the remaining five cities. Our EE users observed a Good Voice App Experience in 12 cities, but our Vodafone users weren’t far behind with 11. In the vast majority of the cities we’ve analyzed our 3 and O2 users had an Acceptable experience, though our users on 3 in Hull experienced a Poor one.
Our EE users observed average download speeds above 40 Mbps in 14 cities, with Liverpool and Birkenhead just 0.8 points shy of the 40 mark. In addition, our EE users in Belfast’s average speeds were 0.3 Mbps below 50 Mbps. Vodafone did not obtain a Download Speed Experience score of 40 Mbps or higher in any of the 17 cities, although it came closest in Slough where its score was only 0.8 Mbps shy of the mark. Our users on 3’s network experienced speeds below 20 Mbps in four cities: Hull, London, Bristol and Belfast, while the same was true for our O2 users in seven cities — including the score of 10.7 Mbps seen by them in Reading.
On Upload Speed Experience, our EE users observed speeds above 10 Mbps in 13 cities — with those in Reading just 0.1 Mbps shy of the 12 Mbps mark — and the same was true for our Vodafone users in Glasgow and Slough. Our O2 and 3 users observed average upload speeds below 7 Mbps in 15 and three cities, respectively.
While EE did not hit the 95% mark for 4G Availability nationally, it exceeded it in all 17 cities and the operator won in all but one city for this measure of the mobile experience — it tied with Vodafone in Slough. Speaking of Vodafone, the operator scored above 95% in Nottingham and below 90% in Cardiff. Our users on Vodafone and O2 spent more than 90% of their time on 4G in 16 and 15 cities, respectively, while our users on 3’s network only observed a score above 90% in Slough.
Moving onto the U.K.’s national capitals, in Belfast EE won on Games Experience, Download Speed Experience, Upload Speed Experience and 4G Availability. There was a three-way tie between EE, O2 and Vodafone on Video Experience and a draw between EE and Vodafone on Voice App Experience.
EE had slightly less success in Cardiff, snapping up awards for Video Experience, Download Speed Experience and 4G Availability. Vodafone and EE were joint winners for Games Experience, Voice App Experience and Upload Speed Experience.
In Edinburgh, EE won awards for four out of six metrics, tied with O2 on Games Experience and our users there observed a three-way tie on Voice App Experience between EE, O2 and Vodafone. The average download speed observed by our EE users was more than 20 Mbps faster than that seen by those on the operator with the second highest score — O2. Finally, in London, EE won outright across all six measures of the mobile experience
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