October 2017

Worse-than average packet loss and jitter seen on our testing of 3’s network suggests that subscribers may be experiencing issues ranging from degraded online gaming and media streaming to issues with VoIP applications such as Skype.

 "The 3 network is experiencing an higher than average packet-loss and higher overall jitter which could suggest that its network is busy and demand is outstripping its ability to supply"

UK Network Testing Results
Summary Table

These symptoms are often typical of networks experiencing high network congestion or of network infrastructure in need of modernisation. Results are based on the analysis of over 118 million data records we collated between July 1 and September 30, 2017.

During this 91 day period we used a formula that consisted of download and upload speeds and latency, jitter and packet loss to assess the network performance of the UK’s four mobile network operators, 3, O2, Vodafone and EE.

Network performance was measured across both 3G infrastructure and 4G infrastructure. An average was then established across the all tested connections.

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About our testing

Tutela tests mobile networks by crowdsourcing anonymous sensor data from hundreds of millions of Android and iOS mobile users across the world. This enables us to collect billions of measurements every day and gain a real-world understanding of the mobile experience that mobile users are getting - not just in major towns & cities, but in all parts of the world.

Our testing methodology is designed to simulate typical user mobile behaviour, such as downloading a photograph or web page, rather than measuring the maximum performance, such as the peak download speed during a very large file transfer (which very few users will achieve) so that we can understand a typical user's experience.