Ofcom awards fastest 3G mobe-data crown to O2 Ofcom's report on mobile broadband shows O2 has the UK's fastest 3G network, and Orange the slowest, but highlights that coverage matters a lot more than speed. Taking average download speeds over a three-month period, O2 comes in just under 3Mb/sec, while Orange languishes at half that – nearer the overall average speed of 1. …
My handset must be blacklisted or something then, I struggle to get more than a few kb/sec most of the time. Then there are the countless customers who can't open the pdf I sent them because the file is corrupt once Orange have had their hands on it. I rue the day I left O2.
...with the Orange/T-Mobile merger...
T-mobile was tolerable before that, but since the merger quality has dropped off a cliff.
It's getting vaguely better now, but it's still only by comparison, and let's be honest, it's still shite.
Would be very interested to see the performance of Giff Gaff, Tesco, Virgin etc to see if the network sharing/white labelling makes much of a difference?
I'll be interested to see how many shills turn up to rah rah rah about Orange/T-mobile, and I'm confident people will give them the scorn they deserve...
In the real world it's coverage that matters - no point having 3Mbit/s next to a cell tower but no signal where you live. I travel around the country quite a lot and have a SIM for each network - in my (rather non scientific) tests I find Vodafone and Three are typically the best for overall coverage and speed. T-Mobile is next and O2 and Orange the worst. Orange coverage is generally ok but often much slow - i.e. basic 3G rather than 3.5G.
Ofcom - sponsored by O2?
O2 worked fine in London but as soon as you dare to venture out you get poor signal for voice and data. Used to get loads of dropped calls and slow 3G. Switched to Vodafone = far better and SureSignal (femtocells) mean you get great coverage at home (even if their main network does not reach).
Yeah, I had that once too. Unfortunately the network is so overloaded in many areas that I have to FORCE 2G on my Android Smart phone just to be able to receive calls and text messages. It's a laugh. I've ordered myself a Vodafone SIM card to see how their data network differs from O2's.
I've been a loyal O2 customer for 6 years. I think it's about time I changed...
Ditto all the coverage comments - O2 have the worst coverage of all, I carry a "3" SIM for emergencies.
The speed claims don't match what I see. Out here in the suburbs I get good 3.5G and high *sustained* throughputs. But the latency is so poor browsing is near unusable and the image compression is shocking. In the city I get great signal strength, great rated connection speed but no actual throughput at all for extended periods of time.
At the best of times the latency on O2 is terrible and seriously harms browsing, at worst - well I've seen 30second latency occasionally and 5-10s is fairly common in the city (why throughput is so poor). I've had browsing sessions run faster on 2G than 3G at times, thanks to that shitty 3G latency.
What they measured has fsck all to do with what users actual need.
If O2's bastard child giffgaff weren't so damn cheap I'd be on "any other network". If I actually needed my phone I'd move anyway - luckily I work at home and my normal pub crawl has continuous Wifi coverage ;)
Full 3.5G signal, but nothing happens. Not even pings make it through. My experience of o2's GPRS/EDGE network is terrible too. When this shitty contract is up in 10,000 years, I'll be going back to Three. They might have a bad rep, but they were never any hassle for me and if anything their bad rep means their the only cellco that has decent contention on their pipes.
on avg my orange HSDPA+ device (3.75g) never really goes any faster then 2mb (256KB/s) it should be like to do up to 7mb but thats unlikely (expected 3-5 really)
the problem with mobile broadband or smartphones devices (both should get around same speeds) is that 1 tower can only provide so much bandwidth Total for every one (Voice gets higher priority over data so if the tower that is in use has a lot of users talking on it data can be quite poor)
even with LTE 4g coming with crappy 1-2GB an month plans just means you hit that limit far faster (Three UK offer best data plans but network coverage sucks and t-mobile data amount sucks but you can still use it after you burned the 1gb up but at 2g speeds)
Why do people come on here and make statements as if they are facts when they really have no idea.... Fair use policy for T-mobile for instance is applied to streaming and up/downloading files, they will not change your connection speed!! You will still be able to browse & email it will just stop your streaming etc. after you hit the limit...Fact
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