EE Named London’s Best Operator Again, But Rivals Improve

EE has retained its title as London’s best mobile operator, according to independent testing from RootMetrics.

Its median upload speed, however, has fallen from 19.3Mbps to 10.6Mbps since the last time the capital’s networks were tested by the research firm in April.

Overall, EE achieved a ‘Rootscore’ of 93.4, ahead of Vodafone on 89.6, O2 with 88.2 and Three on 87.7. EE was top or joint-top in all individual categories tested, including network reliability, network speed and mobile Internet.

All four operators achieved scores of at least 90 for network reliability, but there were significant differences in speed. EE led the way with 91, followed by Vodafone with 85 and O2 with 80, but Three trailed on 71.2. In terms of overall mobile Internet, EE scord 94.5 and all operators scored at least 85.

RootMetrics scores

EE shared the honours for calls with Three and O2 – the latter of which improved its blocked call rate from 2 percent to 0.9 percent during the testing period – while it was the joint- best performing operator for texts.

RootMetrics says that despite EE’s dominance in testing, all operators have made significant improvements.

“EE has once again shown itself to be the top operator in the capital, but it’s interesting to see Vodafone’s improvement over the last six months,” said Scott Stonham, RootMetrics European general manager. “The real story here though, is how close the operators are performing on reliability. With each scoring over 90, consumers can expect a strong service in London whatever network they are on.”

O2 has been critical of RootMetrics methods, while Three prefers to emphasise other metrics which take into account things like customer service. However Stonham told TechWeekEurope in an interview earlier this yearthat the operators could not discredit it’s “scientific” network tests.

How much do you know about UK mobile operators? Try our quiz!