In the second half of 2017, EE had a clean sweep of all the categories which RootMetrics measures.

“EE leads the pack in all areas – reliability, speed, data and text handling – and shares the lead with 3 in call performance,” Root Metrics’ general manager, Scott Stonham, told EW.

Asked to explain what the data, text and call categories are measuring, Stonham replied: “The call performance category measures dropped and blocked calls. Data handling measures both the efficiency of intensive data performance – as in streaming – and the speed of handling of smaller blocks of data. Text is measured on success/failure and, to a certain extent, on speed.”

EE’s supremacy applies to all of the UK – England, Wales and Scotland – except Northern Ireland where all the operators do well.

Stonham attributed this to the fact that the “population is evenly dispersed across Northern Ireland unlike in the rest of the UK.”

Asked why EE is pre-eminent, Stonham replied: “”Because they’re the leaders in 4G.”

Asked how EE got its 4G lead, Stonham said: “Because Ofcom gave them the licence to deploy 4G before everyone else. For the last three or four years, EE has come out top of the Root Metrics ratings because of its 4G dominance.”

“This is why Vodafone and EE are very concerned about Ofcom’s handling of 5G,” added Stonham.

EE had a notable area of improvement this year taking the lead in ‘drops and blocks’ – dropped calls and blocked calls.

This Stonham attributed to EE’s adoption of VoLTE.

Vodafone, a winner of two national awards during the previous testing period, slipped down the rankings, winning no awards in the second half of the year.

O2 remained in last place out of the four major mobile operators as it continued to struggle across most categories of performance.

The RootMetrics UK National RootScore Report, however, shows some rays of light for the Telefonica subsidiary – O2’s ranking for text performance showed signs of improvement and RootMetrics’ analysis suggests that if O2 can improve performance in rural areas, it can significantly improve its ranking at a national level.

In addition, O2 provided a strong showing in Northern Ireland testing, with O2 sharing first place with EE, Three, and Vodafone in the categories of overall performance, network reliability, call performance, and it shared first place solely with EE in text performance.

Like O2, Vodafone performed well in Northern Ireland, sharing awards for overall performance, network reliability, and call performance, albeit seeing its performance in the text category fall from first to last in the region.

Three on the other hand displayed a particular strength in Wales, ranking first outright for both network reliability and call performance.

In the second half of 2017, RootMetrics carried out nearly 708 thousand tests using the Samsung Galaxy S8, travelling more than 22,048 miles to measure performance, as well as visiting 649 indoor locations.

“We’re starting to see that capital expenditure in the latest network infrastructure, such as EE’s investment in VoLTE pays off in the form of improved customer experience,” said Stonham, “according to IHS Markit research, capex is expected to grow moderately this year, and we will see the foundations being laid for fibre plant and 5G. It will be fascinating to see how the operators balance the creation of the networks of the future and maintaining and improving existing infrastructure.”

Carrier Aggregation is one technology which is being added quite rapidly to improve capacity and performance.

“In Metropolitan areas EE had 21% usage of Carrier Aggregation in the first half of 2017 and 28% in the second half.”

Asked what those percentages represented, Stonham replied: The amount of time, when connected to an LTE network, that you’re connected over Carrier Aggregation.”

For Vodafone the Carrier Aggregation percentage was: H1 – 15%; H2 – 22%.

For O2 the figure was: H1 – 22%; H2 28%.

RootScore Award Summary for the UK, Second Half of 2017

Following is a summary of RootScore Award winners for the second half of 2017 in the UK. For more details, view the entire report, here.

Overall Performance: EE
Network Reliability: EE
Network Speed: EE
Data Performance: EE
Call Performance: EE&Three (tie)
Text Performance: EE