Network benchmarking provider Ookla, which operates the popular Speedtest.net internet connection testing service, has kindly furnished ISPreview with some additional data that reveals the past and present levels of UK 5G mobile (mobile broadband) availability across EE (BT), Vodafone, Three UK and O2 (Virgin Media). Some of the results may surprise.
Just to be clear. The figures for 5G availability reflect the percentage of users with 5G devices spending most of their time connected to 5G networks. This is not to be confused with the figures for either population coverage or landmass (geographic) coverage of the same network technology.
As previously reported on Monday, the United Kingdom currently achieves a national 5G availability score of 42.2%, which put us behind most of Europe and we’ve already explored some of the reasons for that (here). But Ookla has now kindly also pulled together some new data for ISPreview on the UK’s 5G availability by network operator, which shows how the situation has changed between Q4 2023 and Q4 2024.
Overall, EE leads the pack with a 5G availability score of 67.45% (i.e. they might not tend to beat Three UK for 5G speeds, but availability is over double), which is followed by O2 on 46.11% (O2 often come bottom of many performance studies, but availability seems to be another matter), then Three UK on 31.1% and finally Vodafone places last with a feeble score of 16.37%.
The big differences above will be at least partly related to the strength of existing 4G networks and rising adoption of true end-to-end 5G Standalone networks. But on that front we’re still surprised to see Vodafone trailing so far behind and O2 pulling so far ahead of both Three UK and Vodafone.