Hah. That doesn't even take account of the ten attempts it took to get a connection at all on 3 or the days I constantly stare at one or two bars on screen on EE and getting no data, only to go into service mode to see the phone blasting out full transmit power and being unable to get a response from the tower.



A slightly more rounded comparison - at Napier Merchiston campus:

3 vs EE vs O2.

Where 3G speed is no use to me at all since there is 100Mbit eduroam wifi.


That'll be because as I said, it's not available to the public yet. The masts will be set to bar anyone but network engineers and testers.

What I'm really surprised by is how nobody has mentioned latency yet. One reason I'm excited about 3's LTE rollout is because of latency. 3's 3G is already lower latency to London than EE's 4G, let alone EE's 3G which is even slower than O2. But the latter varies drastically from cellsite to cellsite, and also differs by as much as 40% between 3G 900 and 2100.

However LTE should reduce latency considerably over 3G and I've seen it do so in practice - but the only network with LTE to date also happens to be the one with second worst overall latency anyway so the end result is still unimpressive. C'mon 3...

During October in Edinburgh EE (and i assume 3) had several sites down for maintenance as part of adding more 4G sites to add depth. 3 sites all round my property it was like the bermuda triangle for data for about a whole month So i wouldn't say Beacon was disadvantaged by it's timing. I got dropped calls then.. didn't before nor have i had any since.. as I've stated before it usually indicates ongoing work. Folk with O2 / Voda connections have been complaining of dropped calls the whole length of their contracts which has progressively worse since 4G work started so... i'm not sure what to say about your experience as our tech guys experience in Edinburgh is similar to Root Metrics.

Only at the end of Oct / start of November have i started to see new cabs at Voda/O2 sites (huge blooming things!) although MBNL's new additions are not small either!

http://imgur.com/IlDn3k8

If you look at the large area they have tested i'm not surprised that O2 and Voda are poor. Stray a few miles outwards from the bypass and the O2 signal goes to Edge pretty much everywhere, Voda not much better but MBNL for the most is blanket 3G. O2's 3G coverage is about the the same as EE's 4G coverage.... and that is where you have to stop and think WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING for the last few years!

MBNL has expanded 3G to most of the area tested in the last 24 months and EE has matched them on 4G. This is where i have a massive issue with O2/Voda.

As for inside the bypass things are far more matched with coverage being very similar, the occasional 3G blackspot with all of them but MBNL still have the faster speeds and strangely it isn't Three as I would say EE 3G is faster here. I'm yet to see O2 or Voda provide over 8mbps on a regular basis.. something EE & 3 do easily everyday here.

EE4G speeds are quite variable though but i think Edinburgh is hitting a critical mass on the network, with them needing to roll out more 4G enabled sites (which they are i.e. depth) as 4G sign up here has been particularly strong, especially with businesses based in the west.

I say that but for me It never goes below 20mbps but it rarely hits over 45 like it used to most of the time...

Should be interesting when O2/Voda switch on as i know a heap of EE sites are to be switched on outside Edinburgh (providing better coverage than the former) and many more inner city (allowing speeds faster than the former, to hover nearer the golden 50-60 mbps again)

Will also be interesting to see how far 800 4G covers here..

So the next time this testing is done (likely March) All 4 networks will be on a better footing to compare.

Not sure if this is what i see here. Three is always about the same as EE3G latency and EE 4G is about the same or less.

Also 3G isn't really comparable either even when your getting 20 mbps from Three 3G or EE 3G (on a 4G account) and around 20 mbps from EE 4G, both with similar latency.. the EE 4G always seems much snappier.. not sure why this would be. lack of compassion/image tampering? maybe it's the priority or maybe the upload speed helping things who knows. I expect '4ThreeG' to be no different to EE's as it's the same backhaul, same antennas.. only different cabinets at most sites.

But Three will be seeing far more traffic, likely more data usage from users but with less spectrum so this may be a factor on the latency we end up seeing.

Like any company, American or not they still have sponsors/need to pay their workers.
No one questions the fact that 'for a point in time' they are real.
The relevance is always open to debate.

And as yet, no sponsors have ever come forward to help tell us which smartphones are the best for coverage.

They sell the reports to Govt i.e. Ofcom, all of the Mobile networks and researcher/stats companies so that is where they get cash.

Lord Lucan- That picture you posted are they MBNL cabinets or the new Vodafone /O2 ones ?

On the subject of Root Metrics, maybe their market is businesses who are happy to pay for a more proper localised picture.

They look like Sodafone/O2, and nothing like the EE ones.

Incidentally, where on earth did you get the idea from that MBNL cabs were huge? The MBNL/EE/3 4G LTE cabs are absolutely tiny.
http://qasdfdsaq.com/images/misc/lte.png
(compared to a year ago, just before LTE launch):
http://qasdfdsaq.com/images/misc/pre-lte.png

Can't wait until Thursday for vodafone 4G switch on tried Glasgow 4G and got 66Mbps down and 19Mbps upload.

Hmm, I've been able to connect to both Vodafone and O2 LTE networks since at least 4am today, though I can't say if the former actually does anything as I don't have a Vodafone 4G SIM. It's certainly not barring connections though, which makes a change from last week.

Incidentally, Rootmetrics also say O2's 4G speeds are faster than Vodafone's, in the only city they've tested it in - London.

Just tried when i select the 4G network it says could not connect

Oh well, looks like they're actually waiting till Thursday after all then. Two days of unnecessary battery wastage coming up!