Ofcom has published its first-ever research into the performance of mobile broadband across the UK. It’s looked at dongles and datacards rather than smartphones, discovering that 17% of UK households use mobile broadband. Around 7% of households use mobile broadband as their only internet access; a figure that’s more than doubled since 2009.
After conducting over 4.2 million tests, the average download speed was measured at 1.5Mbit/sec. This meant that webpages took an average of 8.5 seconds to download. However, being in a good 3G coverage area boosted average mobile broadband speeds to 2.1Mbps. Fixed-line UK broadband speeds during a similar period showed an average 6.2Mbit/s.
The report says O2, Vodafone and 3 offered faster average download speeds than T-Mobile and Orange; on average, O2 delivered web pages faster than the other four operators.
[Full report]