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Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published an updated study that compares Vodafone and Three UK’s mobile broadband performance in terms of 4G Download Speed and “Excellent Consistent Quality“, which is intended to help provide an indication for how the recently completed merger might impact things.
In case anybody has forgotten, the combined VodafoneThree network plans to invest £11bn to upgrade the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next 10-years (here, here and here). This aims, among other things, to reach 99.95% of the UK’s population with their 5G Standalone (5G SA) network by 2034.
The combined network will also be built at speed, with the 5G SA build plan being front-loaded so that, by the end of the third year, it will hit 90% population coverage from a current baseline of 47%. Around 71% of the UK population (circa 50 million) will have access to their fastest 5G speeds by the end of year one.
In addition, within another week or so, through the sharing of combined spectrum, some 7 million Three UK and SMARTY customers are also expected to receive an improvement in 4G data speeds (mobile broadband) of up to 20% (average). In the new analysis, Opensignal leverages crowdsourced data collected from users of the two networks to look at existing performance and speculate on how this might change in the future.
For example, the data reveals that, nationally, Three UK’s users already see faster 4G download speeds than those on Vodafone – scoring 30.1Mbps vs Vodafone’s 28.6Mbps. But Three UK’s users lag Vodafone and the national average on the consistency of their experience (Three scores just 68.6% for ‘Excellent Consistent Quality’, compared to 75.4% for Vodafone and 72.5% for the national average).
However, the introduction of roaming between the two networks, as well as the deployment of their combined spectrum holdings (pending divestments to O2) and VodafoneThree’s promised rapid roll-out of 5G SA access coverage could cause a massive shift in the future.
“Together, these changes could reshape the U.K.’s mobile market, shifting the balance of Opensignal’s experience awards. For example, EE has long dominated our national award tables due to its broad spectrum holdings. Similarly, Three-UK’s strong 5G speed performance stems from its large 3.4–3.8GHz holdings acquired in the UK Broadband Ltd deal,” said Opensignal.
