EE wins on most metrics in UK mobile experience study

Opensignal’s latest UK Mobile Network Experience Report sees EE claim seven awards outright and three joint wins, while Three clocked the fastest 5G speeds.

The report is based on data collected between 1 June and 29 August 2023, and purports to examine the mobile network experience of the four main mobile network operators in the UK – Three, EE, O2 and Vodafone.

It lists Three as top dog for 5G download speeds with a score of 205.5Mbps, giving it the honour of being the only UK operator to exceed 200Mbps, and has a lead of 91.1Mbps over second-placed Vodafone.

Three also comes top in terms of 5G upload speeds, with a score of 17.5Mbps – a lead of 1.6Mbps over former joint winner EE. The report attributes this change in rankings to a 0.9Mbps (5.6%) drop in EE users’ average 5G upload speeds.

It was EE however that picked up the most gongs overall. These include the Games Experience category, in which it was given a score of 69.7 points on a 100-point scale, a lead of 1.4 points over Vodafone which shared the award with EE in the last time around. It also came top in the more specific 5G Games Experience category with 78.2 points, followed by Vodafone and Three in joint second place with statistically tied scores of 75.3-75.6 points.

EE also took home the report’s new Live Video Experience award with a score of 58.9 points. This award quantifies the quality of real-time video streamed to mobile devices by measuring video streams over an operator’s network, in contrast to Video Experience – which EE and Vodafone jointly won – which focuses on on-demand video streaming.

Meanwhile Vodafone claims the Voice App Experience award with a score of 77.5 points, giving it a slim lead of 0.4 points over EE. All four operators place in the Acceptable (74-80) category, so that’s nice for them.

“EE continues to reap the largest harvest from our awards table — this time around, the operator wins seven awards outright and three jointly — slightly down from the last report when it won eight outright but shared first place across five categories,” said the report. “Our users on EE observe the fastest average overall speeds and the best experience when playing multiplayer mobile games (both overall and on 5G). The operator is also the first U.K. operator to win the Live Video Experience award and also claims the Consistent Quality award, which replaces the Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistent Quality awards that featured in previous reports.

“3 has the next largest haul, with its award wins concentrated in 5G Experience categories. It wins three awards outright — both 5G speed awards (5G Download Speed and 5G Upload Speed) and Availability, and is a joint winner for 5G Video Experience, 5G Live Video Experience and 5G Availability.”

EE tends to come off well in any comparative performance in the UK operator ecosystem, however with Three hot on its heels it will be interesting to see how the rankings change if the proposed merger with Vodafone goes ahead.

The full list of winners and losers in the report’s metrics of choice can be seen below.

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