Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
EE wins Opensignal’s Reliability Experience award outright, making it the first operator to do so in a U.K mobile network experience report. EE does so with a score of 881 points on a 100-1000 point scale, narrowly ahead of Vodafone’s 874 points. Reliability Experience measures the ability of our users to connect to and successfully complete (basic) tasks on operators’ networks.
Our O2 users have the best Coverage Experience in the U.K. measured across all generations of mobile technology. O2 wins the award with a score of 8.9 points on a 10-point scale, narrowly beating EE which places in second with 8.6 points. Coverage Experience measures the extent of mobile networks in the places people live, work and travel.
EE wins both the overall Video Experience and Games Experience awards outright. This is a return to form for the operator as in the last report, it had to share the winners’ podium for Video Experience with Vodafone. In addition, EE is the outright winner of both the 5G Video Experience and 5G Games Experience awards.
EE is the outright winner of both the 5G Availability and 5G Coverage Experience awards. This means that our EE 5G users spend the most time with an active 5G connection and also have the best experience in terms of the 5G coverage they receive. Both are important factors given that users can only enjoy the superior mobile experience that 5G provides when they have a 5G connection.
As was the case in the last report, EE users see the fastest average overall download and upload speeds measured across all generations of mobile technology. As a result, EE retains its outright wins for Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience. However, our 3 users see the fastest download and upload speeds when connected to 5G.
EE once again reaps the largest tally of awards. This time around it wins 10 out of 14 awards outright, including all four overall experience awards and both the 5G Coverage Experience and 5G Availability awards.
3 has the second largest haul, winning the 5G Download Speed, 5G Upload Speed and Availability awards outright. The only other operator to win a national award in this report is O2, which comes top for Coverage Experience.
Despite not coming away with a single award in this report, Vodafone places second across seven out of 14 awards, including three out of four overall experience awards, along with both consistency awards (Consistent Quality and Reliability Experience).
A lot has happened recently in the U.K. mobile market. EE recently launched its commercial 5G standalone access (SA) service in 15 major cities, following on the heels of Vodafone, which launched its SA service back in June 2023. SA enables the use of network slicing and involves the use of a 5G core network. This is in contrast to 5G non-standalone access (NSA) technology which uses a 4G core network in combination with a 5G radio access network (RAN).
Both EE and Vodafone completed their 3G shutdowns in February 2024. Shutting 3G networks helps improve the smartphone user experience as not having to support 3G frees up spectrum to help alleviate congestion on other networks. Nothing can be done better on 3G than on 4G or 5G from a smartphone users’ perspective. Shutting down 3G reduces the complexity of being a mobile operator and improves energy efficiency. As of writing 3 is planning to follow by the end of 2024, while O2 says that it will start switching off 3G in 2025.
Looming over everything is the potential merger between Vodafone and 3, which has yet to obtain all the necessary regulatory approvals. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) expects to complete its Phase 2 investigation on the potential impact of the merger by December 2024 and has recently published its provisional findings. Opensignal has published an insight that shows that if the merger went ahead, the combined entity would have comparable Coverage Experience to O2 to O2, which wins the award for this metric in this report. This does not account for any future post-merger actions such as the decommissioning of sites. In addition, we have found that Three has high competitive losses relative to its market share and that over the last year more and more of its losses have been going to MVNOs on its own network.
In this report we examine the mobile network experience of the four main mobile network operators in the United Kingdom — O2, Vodafone, 3 and EE — over a period of 90 days starting on June 01, 2024, and ending on August 29, 2024, to see how they fared.
EE has returned to being the outright winner of the Video Experience award, after sharing the award with Vodafone in the previous report. EE wins with a score of 66.6 points on a 100-point scale and a lead of four points over former joint-winner Vodafone. 3 is in third place with a score of 61.4 points, while O2 comes fourth with a score of 60.1 points.
All operators place in the Good (58-68) category. This indicates that our users are, on average, able to stream video at 720p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
Video Experience scores account for adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR), a technology that allows Opensignal to accurately represent users' real video experience including video streams up to 4K quality.
Opensignal’s Video Experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's networks. The metric is based on an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approach, built upon detailed studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters, including picture quality, video loading time and stall rate, with the perceived video experience as reported by real people. To calculate video experience, we are directly measuring video streams from end-user devices and using this ITU approach to quantify the overall video experience for each operator on a scale from 0 to 100. The videos tested include a mixture of resolutions — including Full HD (FHD) and 4K / Ultra HD (UHD) — and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers.
In addition to Video Experience, we report on the following metrics related to video experience:
Our EE users continue to have the best overall experience while playing multiplayer mobile games over cellular connections, so EE is once again the outright winner of the Games Experience Award. It wins this time with a score of 70 points on a 100-point scale and a lead of one point over Vodafone. 3 comes third with a score of 64.2 points, while O2 is in last place with 62.7 points.
Vodafone and EE place in the Fair (65-75) category, while O2 and 3 place one category lower, in Poor (40-65).
A Fair (65-75) rating means that users find the experience to be ‘average’. In most cases the game is responsive to the actions of the player with most users feeling like they have control over the game. The majority of players notice a delay between their actions and the outcomes in the game. A Poor (40-65) rating means that most users find this level of experience unacceptable. The majority of users see a delay in the gameplay experience and they do not receive immediate feedback on their actions. Many users feel a lack of controllability.
Opensignal’s Games Experience measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how our users’ multiplayer mobile gaming experience is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter.
Games Experience quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices connected to servers located around the world. The approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games (such as Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor) played around the world.
Calculating Games Experience starts with measuring the end-to-end experience from users’ devices to internet end-points that host real games. The score is then measured on a scale from 0 to 100.
In addition to Games Experience, we report on the following metrics related to games experience:
EE is yet again the outright winner of the Download Speed Experience award, continuing its unbroken string of victories in this category. EE wins this time around with a score of 45.9Mbps and a lead of 8Mbps over 3, which is in second-place with its score of 38Mbps. As EE’s score has risen by 6Mbps, while 3’s increased by 3Mbps, EE’s lead has improved compared to that seen in the last report.
Vodafone comes third with a score of 31.1Mbps, up 3Mbps from last time. O2 remains in last place with 23.1Mbps.
Measured in Mbps, Download Speed Experience represents the typical everyday speeds a user experiences across an operator’s mobile data networks.
In addition to Download Speed Experience, we report on the following metrics related to download speeds:
EE again wins the Upload Speed Experience award outright, this time with a score of 9.8Mbps and a lead of 2Mbps over second-placed Vodafone. 3 comes third with a score of 7.1Mbps, while O2 places last with 5.3Mbps.
Upload Speed Experience measures the average upload speeds for each operator observed by our users across their mobile data networks. Typically upload speeds are slower than download speeds, as current mobile broadband technologies focus resources on providing the best possible download speed for users consuming content on their devices. As mobile internet trends move away from downloading content to creating content and supporting real-time communications services, upload speeds are becoming more vital and new technologies are emerging that boost upstream capacity.
In addition to Upload Speed Experience, we report on five supporting metrics related to upload speeds:
EE is the new outright winner of the 5G Video Experience award after previously sharing it with 3 and Vodafone. EE wins with a score of 74.8 points on a 100-point scale and a narrow lead over 3, which is in second-place with 73.5 points. Vodafone comes third, followed by O2.
All operators place in the Very Good (68-78) category. This means that our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
5G Video Experience scores account for adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR), a technology that allows Opensignal to accurately represent users' real video experience including video streams up to 4K quality.
5G Video Experience quantifies the quality of mobile video experienced by Opensignal users on real-world video streams when they were connected to 5G. The metric is based on an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approach, built upon detailed studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters, including picture quality, video loading time and stall rate, with the perceived video experience as reported by real people. To calculate 5G Video Experience, we are directly measuring video streams from end-user devices and using this ITU approach to quantify the video experience observed by our users on each operator’s 5G network on a scale from 0 to 100. The videos tested include a mixture of resolutions — including Full HD (FHD) and 4K / Ultra HD (UHD) — and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers.
EE continues to be the outright winner of the 5G Games Experience award, doing so this time with a score of 81.9 points on a 100-point scale and a lead of around four points over second-placed 3. Vodafone comes third with a score of 76.1 points, followed by O2 with 74.4 points.
Vodafone, 3 and EE place in the Good (75-85) category, while O2 places one category lower, in Fair (65-75).
A Good (75-85) rating means that most users deem the experience acceptable. The gameplay experience is generally controllable and the user receives immediate feedback between their actions and the outcomes in the game. Most users do not experience a delay between their actions and the game. A Fair (65-75) rating means that users find the experience to be ‘average’. In most cases the game is responsive to the actions of the player with most users feeling like they have control over the game. The majority of players notice a delay between their actions and the outcomes in the game.
5G Games Experience measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator's 5G network. It analyzes how our users’ multiplayer mobile gaming experience was affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter. 5G Games Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.
5G Games Experience quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices connected to servers located around the world. The approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games (such as Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor) played around the world. Calculating 5G Games Experience starts with measuring the end-to-end experience from users’ devices to internet end-points that host real games.
3 wins the 5G Download Speed award outright for the fifth report in a row, this time with a score of 208.9Mbps and a lead of 70Mbps over second-placed Vodafone. This is a sharp decrease in 3’s margin of victory from the previous report, as while 3’s score hasn’t statistically changed, Vodafone’s has increased by 24Mbps. EE comes third with a score of 96.8Mbps — down 3Mbps from last time — followed by O2 with 80.1Mbps. O2’s score is up 3Mbps from the last report.
5G Download Speed shows the average download speed experienced by Opensignal users across an operator’s 5G network. 5G Download Speed for each operator is calculated in Mbps (Megabits per second).
As was the case in the previous report, 3 is the outright winner of the 5G Upload Speed award. It does so this time with a score of 19.2Mbps, while EE is in second-place with 17.7Mbps. Vodafone comes third with a score of 15.1Mbps, followed by O2 with 10.1Mbps.
Both EE’s and 3’s scores have risen by 2Mbps, while O2's and Vodafone's scores haven't changed by a statistically significant amount from the last report.
5G Upload Speed measures the average upload speeds experienced by Opensignal users across an operator’s 5G network. 5G Upload Speed for each operator is calculated in Mbps (Megabits per second).
O2 wins the Coverage Experience award outright with a score of 8.9 points on a 10-point scale, narrowly beating EE which places in second with 8.6 points. Vodafone comes third with 8.2 points, while 3 is in last place and the only U.K operator to score below eight points.
The Opensignal Coverage Experience metric measures the extent of mobile networks in the places people live, work and travel. The metric represents the experience users receive as they travel around areas where they would reasonably expect to find coverage.
Traditional coverage metrics typically estimate either a percentage of land area covered, or a percentage of population covered; often neither will be an accurate measurement of the true user expectation and experience. In many markets there are areas where neither population density nor geographic area reflect the importance of coverage to users. For example, in a large mountain range most users will not expect coverage in the wilderness, but poor coverage in the relatively small area of a ski resort is critical for the enjoyment of a holiday. Estimates based purely on population give undue significance to coverage in the most densely populated areas.
Coverage Experience measures geographic coverage of populated areas and therefore more accurately reflects the coverage expectations and experience of typical users. It can give a result that is somewhat different to traditional estimates based on either geographic or population measures. The metric uses a scale from 0 to 10.
EE wins the 5G Coverage Experience award outright with a score of 4.4 points on a 10-point scale and a lead of around one point over 3, which places second with its score of 3.7 points. O2 comes third with a score of 3.2 points, followed by Vodafone with two points.
The Opensignal Coverage Experience metric measures the extent of mobile networks in the places people live, work and travel. The metric represents the experience users receive as they travel around areas where they would reasonably expect to find coverage.
Traditional coverage metrics typically estimate either a percentage of land area covered, or a percentage of population covered; often neither will be an accurate measurement of the true user expectation and experience. In many markets there are areas where neither population density nor geographic area reflect the importance of coverage to users. For example, in a large mountain range most users will not expect coverage in the wilderness, but poor coverage in the relatively small area of a ski resort is critical for the enjoyment of a holiday. Estimates based purely on population give undue significance to coverage in the most densely populated areas.
Coverage Experience measures geographic coverage of populated areas and therefore more accurately reflects the coverage expectations and experience of typical users. It can give a result that is somewhat different to traditional estimates based on either geographic or population measures. The metric uses a scale from 0 to 10.
5G Coverage Experience shows the proportion of places Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription had an active 5G connection.
3 once again wins the Availability award outright, this time with a score of 99.2% and a narrow lead over EE’s score of 98.5%. O2 comes third, while Vodafone is quite far behind its rivals with 95.4%.
Our availability metrics are not a measure of a network’s geographical extent. They won’t tell you whether you are likely to get a signal if you plan to visit a remote rural or nearly uninhabited region. Instead, they measure what proportion of time people have a network connection, in the places they most commonly frequent — something often missed by traditional coverage metrics. Looking at when users have a connection rather than where, provides us with a more precise reflection of the true user experience.
We also keep track of the instances that leave mobile users most frustrated: when there is no signal to connect to at all. The most common dead zones users struggle with occur indoors. As most of our availability data is collected indoors (as that’s where users spend most of their time), we’re particularly astute at detecting areas of zero signal.
Our availability metrics take a user-centric, time-based approach that complements the user-centric and geographical-based methodology used by our reach metrics.
Availability shows the proportion of time all Opensignal users on an operator’s network had either a 3G, 4G or 5G connection.
EE is the new outright winner of the 5G Availability award — a change from the last report, when it shared the award with O2, Vodafone and 3. EE wins with a score of 13.2% and a lead of around four percentage points over Vodafone and 3, which are statistically tied for second place. O2 comes fourth with a score of 8.3%.
Our availability metrics are not a measure of a network’s geographical extent. They won’t tell you whether you are likely to get a signal if you plan to visit a remote rural or nearly uninhabited region. Instead, they measure what proportion of time people have a network connection, in the places they most commonly frequent — something often missed by traditional coverage metrics. Looking at when users have a connection rather than where, provides us with a more precise reflection of the true user experience.
We also keep track of the instances that leave mobile users most frustrated: when there is no signal to connect to at all. The most common dead zones users struggle with occur indoors. As most of our availability data is collected indoors (as that’s where users spend most of their time), we’re particularly astute at detecting areas of zero signal.
Our availability metrics take a user-centric, time-based approach that complements the user-centric and geographical-based methodology used by our reach metrics.
5G Availability shows the proportion of time Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription had an active 5G connection.
As was the case in the last report, EE is the outright winner of the Consistent Quality. It does so this time with a score of 76.7% and a lead of two percentage points over Vodafone. 3 comes third with a score of 69.1%, while O2 places last with 64.6%.
Vodafone has traded places with 3, due to an impressive 10 percentage point rise in its score while 3’s rose by a more modest three percentage points. EE's score has increased by four percentage points, while O2's score rose by two. As a result of the improvement seen by our Vodafone users, EE’s lead has dropped from six to two percentage points.
This metric measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical demanding tasks on their devices. It assesses a number of experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss, and time to first byte.
Consistent Quality measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical tasks on their devices.
We combine different experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet discard, and time to first byte to calculate Consistent Quality. These components are evaluated against thresholds recommended by various more demanding common applications used for a range of common tasks.
To calculate the metric value, the proportion of tests that pass the requirements of Consistent Quality is multiplied by the test success ratio, which is the proportion of completed tests to all tests conducted. Tests that pass indicate that activities such as video calling, uploading an image to social media, or using smart home applications will be possible without noticeable lag or slowdown.
EE is the first U.K. operator to win the Reliability Experience award — it does so outright with a score of 881 points on a 100-1000 point scale, narrowly ahead of Vodafone’s 874 points. 3 comes third with a score of 863 points, while O2 is in last place with 830 points.
Opensignal’s Reliability Experience measures the ability of our users to connect to and successfully complete (basic) tasks on operators’ networks. It consists of the following components: % time connected — The proportion of time Opensignal users can successfully connect to a mobile network Data connectivity — the proportion of time when the network is available and the device can connect to the internet Task completion — whether tasks initiated by the user’s device are completed Sufficiency — The probability that (basic) tasks will be executed sufficiently well for the user
Opensignal’s Reliability Experience measures the ability of Opensignal users to connect to and successfully complete (basic) tasks on communication service providers’ (CSP) networks. It analyzes how much Opensignal users’ experience is affected by the radio access and core network, along with issues that prevent them from connecting to the internet even if they have a connection to their CSP’s network. It also factors in users’ ability to successfully use lower performance applications including SD video, over-the-top voice calls and web browsing.