Trolls, sharpen your blades and pull out your clubs: Ofcom‘s just come back with its independent mobile broadband speed tests to settle once and for all which network is fastest. Let’s breakdown the winners.
Of the five operators, O2 was found to load webpages the fastest, and provided lower latency than every network save for T-Mobile. Ofcom says that O2, Vodafone and 3 all offered faster overall download speeds than T-Mobile and Orange.
Over 4.2 million tests were run from September to December last year, using three different methods to collect data, and 97 locations, hourly, to asses varying speeds over time of day. Mobile broadband dongles and SIM-cards, rather than smartphones, were used to measure speeds.
The study also turned up some other interesting general trends. Averages across all networks hovered around 1.5Mbps for download speed, peaking at 2.1Mbps in areas of stronger coverage – but a far cry from theoretical 7.2Mbps maximum speeds.
A surprisingly large seven percent of the UK population uses mobile broadband as their sole means of access to the internet, up from three percent two years ago.
You can see the full results in the report here and here.
What do you make of the findings? Sound right to you? Shout up with how you’re seeing things in the comments.
