O2 tops Ofcom mobile broadband study

UK TELECOM REGULATOR Ofcom has published its first research on mobile broadband speeds, and mobile operator O2 came out on top.

Ofcom's results for mobile broadband have revealed that O2 is the UK's best mobile broadband operator in terms of download speeds. It came out ahead of Vodafone, which came second, followed by Three, T-Mobile and Orange.

The graph showed O2 average download speed reaching almost 3Mbits/s whilst Orange hit only around 1.4Mbits/s.

In response to Ofcom's report an Orange spokesperson told The INQUIRER, "Although we recognise Ofcom's efforts to introduce an independent report on mobile broadband speeds, we're concerned about the methodology used in the research. Our main concern is that Ofcom's study only focussed on dongles, which are only one part of a consumer's mobile broadband experience and excludes the millions of users that access the internet through their 3G smart phones."

"It also excludes 2G data as well as WiFi and we don't believe it reflects actual 3G geographic coverage or how customers actually use their mobile broadband services."

The average speed was apparently 1.5Mbits/s and a basic web page took an average of 8.5 seconds to load. In areas of good 3G coverage speeds were higher at 2.1Mbit/s but fell to 1.7Mbits/s at peak times between 8pm to 10pm.

Ofcom said that 17 per cent of the nation's households are using mobile broadband to access internet services. It also revealed that seven per cent use mobile broadband as their only way of connecting to the internet, and this is more than double the three per cent in 2009.

It's important to note that these tests included "mobile networks using dongles and datacards and [did] not consider smartphones". Ofcom said it plans to do tests on smartphones in the future.

The research took place between September and December of 2010, included a total of 4.2 million connections tested and measured average speeds, pitting five of the UK's mobile operators against each other.

With speeds reaching only around 3Mbits/s we're eager to get the results of BT and Everything Everywhere's 4G trial, which is set to start in September. µ