Mobile phone users may consider selling their mobile phones and upgrading to a smartphone after a nationwide survey of mobile phone service networks revealed that O2 and Vodafone top the list in network speed.
The survey commissioned by O2 was carried out by benchmarking consultancy Siroda, who compared data access in large cities between service providers Orange, Vodafone, O2, Three, and T-Mobile. It was conducted in the 20 largest cities in the UK and performance was measured by how long each network took to download a typically sized music file and a webpage.
O2 proved to be the fastest music download service in the UK after the survey’s results showed that O2 were the quickest in 12 of the 20 cities tested. Vodafone were faster at accessing the web in more cities than O2, beating all other providers in 5 of the 20 cities. The survey was overseen and verified by the British Approvals Board for Telecommunications (BABT), an independent party.
Recently O2 made a £30 million investment which created an additional 40 masts in and around the Greater London area which makes you consider if £30 million pounds is worth being 30% faster at accessing the web than the slowest provider, taking into account the actual time allowed (fastest 1.3secs, slowest 1.7secs).
Consumers who would like to make use of quick download times could be looking into trading in their handsets and putting the cash towards a device which will make the most out of Siroda’s research.
