EE wins the grand slam in latest Opensignal UK report

The latest Opensignal report shows EE has come on top in all five categories, though the winning margin in video experience was narrow.

The latest report on the UK’s mobile network experience published by the network rating firm Opensignal pitted the country’s four nationwide operators against each other on five measurements: 4G Availability, Video Experience, Download Speed, Upload Speed, and Latency. EE has won every category.

Although EE has been in a leading position in delivering mobile experience, the competition was closer in previous Opensignal assessments. A year ago EE and Vodafone tied in two out of four categories. Half a year ago, Vodafone was still on par with EE on delivering the lowest latency. But the BT-owned operator has opened up a gap over its competitors in most measurements lately.

The one area that EE was not a comfortable winner was video experience. As we reported earlier, higher download speed does not necessarily deliver the best video experience, according to Opensignal’s analysis. Other technologies including traffic management and latency minimisation also feature in the evaluation. Therefore although EE’s download speed is more than 40% faster than its closest competition (Vodafone) and it also has registered the lowest latency, EE only marginally beat Vodafone in video experience. It actually came the last if video experience had been judged on 3G only (3 came on top). But thanks to the superior 4G availability EE customers would not need to fall back on 3G much when streaming video.

The report also provides regional comparison, with the country broken down to twelve regions: Eastern, East Midlands, London, North East, Northern Ireland, North West, Scotland, South East, South West, Wales, West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber. The report dismissed the so-called “North/South divide” as a myth, with some of the “top scores appearing in the North East, North West, West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humber regions”. In an earlier report measuring 4G speed, the firm also noted that London was only mid-table, with the highest 4G download speeds registered in places like Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham.

Here are the countrywide results: