EE has been ranked the best mobile network in the UK in terms of performance, according to a new study by OpenSignal, the BT-owned operator seeing improvements in 4G speeds and availability across the country. OpenSignal collected 2,17 million measurements from 525,500 devices between December and February this year to see how users experienced mobile networks in a real environment. Of the seven national awards to be won in this latest round of testing, EE has won six, including Video Experience, Download Speed, Download Speed, Latency, 4G Availability and 4G Coverage Experience. Vodafone has propelled EE in only one category: Voice Application Experience.
OpenSignal Leaderboards
EE was the only operator with which users were able to get 4G signal in more than 90% of cases. OpenSignal says it expects availability performance to drop once a carrier hits this figure, but EE actually increased its score by 3.66 percentage points to 94.8%. O2 was second with 89.2%, Vodafone third with 88% and Tres with 80%. In terms of download speeds, EE extended its lead over Vodafone by 2.1 Mbps during the trial period. EE scored 34,6 Mbps, with Vodafone second at 23 Mbps. Tres was third with 19.1 Mbps and O2 with 16.6 Mbps. Testing also took place in 16 major cities with EE once again dominating, winning 68 of the 96 individual awards offered and getting 27 more. Only O2 fed EE for an award. These are the first rankings that take 5G performance into account, but OpenSignal expects the impact of 5G to be limited until operators continue to advance their deployments. In addition, he also anticipates that the recently announced shared rural network will improve availability in more regions of the country.