EE tops 5G rankings for first half of the year

For the same period last year, Three was crowned with the same accolade, however this time round the testing firm found EE’s 5G availability and performance narrowly superior. The report was based on based on 625,047 tests conducted across the UK.

EE had a good run of it in many of the metrics – it won or shared every UK-wide RootScore Award during the period, including the 22nd consecutive UK Overall RootScore Award. It took home 31 Nation RootScore Awards out of 32 in total, and ‘held a commanding lead in major cities’ with its 126 Metro Area RootScore Awards coming in at over three times as many as that of any other operator.

For this report, RootMetrics introduced a new Video RootScore Award category which is incorporated into the Overall RootScore alongside data, call, and text results. Multiple key performance indicators representing a good video streaming experience including adaptive start time and failures, adaptive average bitrates, stall events, and severity were measured, and EE again claimed an ‘outright win’.

Three earned second-place finishes in six out of eight performance categories, while Vodafone ranked third in six categories in UK-wide testing, though Vodafone and Three had similar RootScores across multiple categories, the report notes.

EE and Three recorded 5G median download speeds of over 200 Mbps, while Vodafone clocked in at 184.9 Mbps. VMO2 was the only operator whose 5G median download speed in UK-wide testing was below 100 Mbps – coming in at 79.7 Mbps. 

VMO2’s results remained largely similar to those from last year, with last-place rankings in seven of eight categories. 

Delighted with its collection of trophies, EE put out its own release on results of the testing, in which Marc Allera, Chief Executive Officer at EE, said: "The average internet user in the UK spends more than six hours every day online, using multiple connected devices. This makes having reliable connectivity at home and on the move more important than ever.  This research gives every person in the UK a trusted source of insight into the performance of all mobile operators, including in the busiest cities where we all compete every day to provide the most reliable experience.

“With that in mind, for EE to be crowned the UK’s best mobile network for eleven years in a row is a remarkable achievement. We’ve worked tirelessly to deliver the fastest and most reliable mobile network in the UK and we will continue to put network quality at the heart of our customer experience.”

Overall, all the UK’s operators improved their 5G performance in a majority of the 16 cities RootMetrics tested, which sounds like progress across the board despite granular wins for any individual operator.