WIREDGOV

Ofcom has yesterday published its first research into consumers’ experience of mobile broadband in the UK since the 4G auction in 2013.

The research measured the performance of 4G and 3G services on smartphones from the four main mobile operators - EE, O2, Three and Vodafone - in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Manchester.

Helping to improve mobile coverage and quality of service are important objectives for Ofcom. Yesterday’s report is intended to help consumers understand differences in performance between 3G and 4G, and this kind of research is designed to support consumers in choosing a service that best suits their needs. The findings are also expected to encourage providers to improve their performance.

Research methodology

Using smartphones, some 210,000 tests of 4G and 3G mobile broadband were carried out both indoors and outdoors across the five UK cities between March and June 2014. The measurements were taken by experienced Ofcom engineers.

The research compared the performance of 4G and 3G services overall and highlighted variations between operators across four key measures:

• Download speed - the speed it takes to download data from the web.
• Upload speed - how long it takes to upload content such as pictures or videos.
• Web browsing speed - the time it takes to load a standard web page.
• Latency - the time it takes data to travel to a third-party server and back, which is important to reduce delays when making video calls, for example.

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