Vodafone v EE 4G&3G: Lots of tables, 3G, 4G tests, rural too

Over the past couple of months, I've been intensively testing Vodafone and EE's 3G and 4G performance both in my area and somewhat further afield. I've not just been testing for average speed, but rather speeds gained in Urban, semi-urban and rural areas, as well as different times of day for congestion purposes and distilled it into a number of bar graphs. I warn you: the differences between EE and Vodafone are stark though.

Image here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/46141405@N07/16405744415/

I like this, it shows how EE's strategy of using their 1800mhz spectrum and huge number of masts makes a difference compared to Vodafone's 800mhz and half the number of masts.

They should both cover the same land area eventually but until Vodafone rolls out their 2600 spectrum they will have a lot less capacity.

Voda's 3G network is still rubbish, and so not a good fallback when 4G is unavailable, unlike EE who have a very good 3G network.

How have you been defining "congestion"?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

They should both cover the same land area eventually but until Vodafone rolls out their 2600 spectrum they will have a lot less capacity.

Then Vodafone will have the issue of spotty 2600Mhz coverage unless they acquire more mast sites to provide more contiguous coverage that acts as an additional layer with 800Mhz.
When they get around to launching VoLTE it will start filling up the 800Mhz spectrum as people will be using that indoors as 2600Mhz in-building prop is very poor.

2015 / 2016 will be very interesting from a coverage build as some operators have very aggressive coverage plans, that will bring coverage to places that don#t even have 2G...

Somewhat arbitrarily... High was defined 8-9am, 12-2pm and roughly 5pm onwards. Medium was other times during the workday. Low was about pre 7am and post 11pm.

Thanks, bit of information from the operator side of the fence...
Generally traffic drops between 10pm and 6am, from 6am its a steady growth until 8am then steady growth until 12 noon, drop for lunch then back up at 2pm, steady until 3:30pm peak grows until 8pm then steady until 10pm then slows down until 6am tomorrow...

The 3:30pm oddity... school kids! kicked out of school and serving cells increase in traffic as the kids spread out and move other serving cells.

Being on the same sector antenna as a school during lunch break did cause a noticeable drop in throughput.

In reply to a post by bookey:

Then Vodafone will have the issue of spotty 2600Mhz coverage unless they acquire more mast sites to provide more contiguous coverage that acts as an additional layer with 800Mhz.

Ha, yes, hadn't realised that but it makes sense given their comparative lack of masts. Maybe they will only use 2600 in cities with wall mounted masts ?!

When they get around to launching VoLTE it will start filling up the 800Mhz spectrum as people will be using that indoors as 2600Mhz in-building prop is very poor.

2015 / 2016 will be very interesting from a coverage build as some operators have very aggressive coverage plans, that will bring coverage to places that don#t even have 2G...

Yes 2600 is outdoors / shopping mall spectrum. Interesting to see which operators manage to cover areas without 2G

Edited by jchamier (Sat 31-Jan-15 18:31:31)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by bookey:

Then Vodafone will have the issue of spotty 2600Mhz coverage unless they acquire more mast sites to provide more contiguous coverage that acts as an additional layer with 800Mhz.

Ha, yes, hadn't realised that but it makes sense given their comparative lack of masts. Maybe they will only use 2600 in cities with wall mounted masts ?!

I expect this will be home to the 2600Mhz cell sites - http://telecoms.com/310301/vodafone-jcdecaux-sign-gl...

Ha ; I'd better get work to move us near some advertising hoardings !