British telecom regulator Ofcom today shared the findings of the performance of 3G mobile and 4G LTE networks offered by EE, O2, Three and Vodafone.
Ofcom, which conducted 210,000 individual tests during March-June, said 4G LTE networks currently perform much better than 3G networks.
4G vs 3G networks
4G download speeds were more than twice as fast as 3G speeds. 4G gives 15.1Mbit/s overall average speed against 6.1Mbit/s on 3G networks.
4G networks gave seven times faster upload speeds than 3G. 4G networks give average upload speed of 12.4Mbit/s against 1.6Mbit/s on 3G mobile.
Ofcom said Web browsing was faster on 4G than on 3G. 4G network took 0.78 seconds of average time to completely load a standard web page against 1.06 seconds on 3G networks.
4G networks had a lower latency than 3G networks. Across all of test sites, as an average of all of the networks it tested, latency on 4G was 55.0ms, and latency on 3G was 66.8ms.
Ofcom said EE recorded higher download and upload speeds on 4G, while Three performed best at web browsing and latency.
EE performed better on download and upload speed than any other MNO. In relation to web browsing and latency, Three was found to have the better performance.
The average HTTP download speed for EE on 4G was 18.4Mbit/s. For O2 this was 15.6Mbit/s, for Vodafone 14.3Mbit/s and for Three 10.7Mbit/s.
EE and Vodafone had the fastest average 3G download speeds, at 6.8 and 6.7Mbit/s respectively. For O2 this was 5.6Mbit/s and for Three 5.2Mbit/s EE had the highest average 4G upload speed.
EE’s 4G upload speed was 14.7Mbit/s, followed by O2 with 13.0Mbit/s, Vodafone with 11.4Mbit/s and Three with 11.1Mbit/s.
Three had the fastest 3G upload speed (1.7Mbit/s). For O2 and EE this was 1.6Mbit/s and for Vodafone 1.5Mbit/s.
Three had the fastest web browsing speed over both 4G and 3G. The time taken to load a standard web page on Three was 0.62 seconds over 4G and 0.93 seconds over 3G. For both 3G and 4G, EE had the second fastest web browsing speed.
Three had the lowest latency on 3G and on 4G. Three’s 4G latency was 47.6ms while the highest latency on 4G was for O2, at 62.7ms.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
