This year’s report and its findings are based on test results collected between October 2022 and March 2023 by Opensignal, the independent analytics company specialising in quantifying the mobile network experience.

Ofcom found that in terms of cellular network use, and perhaps unsurprisingly, most use was over 4G — mobile users were connected to a 4G network on average 88% of the time. Mobile users were only without cellular connection for around 1% of the time.

However, when people were actively using their phones in 5G-covered areas, data connections to the newer generation of the cellular technology succeeded 98.4% percent of the time, compared to 97.8% for 4G and 91.3% for 3G.

On average, and as the UK rollout of 5G continues, 5G users spent 10.1% of the time connected to a 5G network, 84.3% of the time connected to a 4G network, and a further 4.2% of the time on 3G. 5G users were without a cellular connection 0.8% of the time.

Mobile users spent 6% of the time connected to 3G while the eventual switching off of operators’ 3G networks draws ever closer. EE has said that it’s switching off its 3G network in January 2024, for example.

When it comes to mobile download speeds, download times were much shorter on 5G compared to 4G and 3G, as expected. A 2MB file took on average twice as long to download on a 4G network compared to 5G, and on a 3G network it took more than four times longer than on 4G.

The benefits of 5G’s speed, though, became even more apparent when downloading larger files. On average, the download of a 5MB file was 54% shorter than over 4G.

Recommended

• FanDuel Forms Partnership with STEM Returners
• Trade Digitalisation Act to Bring £1bn to UK Economy
• Global IT Spending Forecasted to Grow 4.3% in 2023

Regarding how things differ between mobile network operators (MNOs), while there were no differences between the average success rates of 5G and 4G data connections, EE customers spent the highest proportion of time connected to 4G (91%).

EE’s average response times, or latency, were also the fastest among the MNOs for 5G (18ms), 4G (18ms), and 3G (29ms). Further, EE users had the fastest upload speeds for 4G (9Mbit/s) and 3G (3Mbit/s), and were joint-first with Three for 5G (17Mbit/s).

O2 customers, however, experienced the slowest average download speeds over 5G and 4G networks (74Mbit/s and 19Mbit/s respectively), and also the slowest average 5G and 4G upload speeds (10Mbit/s and 5Mbit/s).

Ofcom’s report also highlighted some interesting geographical differences when it comes to file download speeds, not least that Scotland had the shortest time to download a 2MB file over 3G, while Northern Ireland and Wales had the longest times.