Network analyst firm Streetwave has today shared the results from a new survey they conducted, which examined the coverage and performance of 4G and 5G mobile (broadband) networks for people travelling on a train from Manchester (Piccadilly) in England to Cardiff (Central) in Wales. Overall, Vodafone came top.
The railway route involved in this study connects Manchester and Cardiff via Crewe, Shrewsbury, Hereford and Newport. According to the ORR – 51.5 million passenger journeys take place annually in stations along this route. Streetwave is understood to have taken their portable data collection equipment onboard for just one of these trips, thus the results below should be considered very anecdotal, albeit still interesting.
In addition, multiple train companies operate the Manchester to Cardiff route, including Transport for Wales (TfW), CrossCountry, Avanti West Coast, and Great Western Railway (GWR). But the study only involved a TfW train that left Manchester Piccadilly at 12:30pm on 02/01/2025 (this was a British Rail Class 197 train full of passengers).
All four of the UK’s mobile operators were measured and their ‘Essential Coverage‘ scores across the journey were as follows. Take note that Streetwave defines Essential Coverage as being reflective of locations where the network provides users with connectivity of above 1Mbps download speeds, 0.5Mbps upload, and below 100ms (milliseconds) of latency (i.e. covering or allowing only the most basic of use cases / needs).
Essential Coverage Achieved on the Route
1. Vodafone – 57%
2. EE – 48%
3. Three UK – 37%
4. O2 – 34%
Put another way, the company’s simulated passenger on each network spent the following amount of time without a dependable internet connection on the 3-hour 13-minute journey: Vodafone – 83 minutes, EE – 100 minutes, Three UK – 123 minutes and O2 – 127 minutes. Clearly there’s room for improvement, although it would have been useful to know which specific parts of the route suffered the poorest patches of connectivity.
“With the UK Government prioritising economic growth – improving connectivity along railway lines should be a strategic move to prevent the working population from spending hundreds of millions of hours each year trapped in Faraday cages without reliable internet access,” said George Gibson, Streetwave’s Co-Founder & Partnership Director.