BT has massively extended its 5G lead over rivals, new data showsBT has massively extended its 5G lead over rivals, new data shows

Network performance monitor Ookla puts BT more than 20 percentage points ahead of Virgin Media O2, its closest rival, on recent 5G availability.

Iain Morris, International Editor

January 29, 2025

4 Min Read
BT's Howard Watson
Howard Watson, BT's chief security and networks officer, at the operator's launch of 5G standalone last year.(Source: Iain Morris/Light Reading)

European lovers of 5G, if such creatures exist, would seemingly be advised to avoid the UK. Data recently published by Ookla, one of several organizations that monitor network performance in the region, placed it eleventh in a ranking of 5G availability across 13 European countries, with a score of 42.2% for the fourth quarter of 2024. According to Ookla's methodology, this essentially measures the amount of time users spend connected to the 5G network. Denmark led on 83.4%, easily beating the UK. Only the small countries of Luxembourg, on 26.9%, and Belgium, on a woeful 9.7%, did worse.

But a breakdown of the performance by each of the UK's four mobile networks shows the biggest has recently had a spurt, widening the gap with its rivals. For the third quarter, incumbent telco BT, owner of the EE mobile brand, had a 5G availability score of 51.34%, putting it roughly 8.8 percentage points ahead of Virgin Media O2, its closest competitor. Just three months later BT had extended its lead to about 21.3 percentage points with an impressive score – for the UK – of 67.45%.

Ookla is not the only monitor in town, of course, and there are different ways to measure 5G performance (basic coverage and speed among them). In the old days, BT's rivals would probably have disputed some of Ookla's findings and reached for alternative data to back up their own 5G claims. But that is less likely now. The 5G availability laggards Three and Vodafone are desperate to merge and last year told competition authorities it was a matter of life or death. Neither makes a sufficient return on investment as an independent player to build a nationwide and capable 5G network, they said.

Spectrum shortcomings

Ookla's analysis of these UK metrics focuses entirely on why Vodafone is so bad. Its 5G availability score was just 16.4% for the final quarter of 2024 and had barely risen over the previous six months. Luke Kehoe, an Ookla analyst, blames Vodafone's spectrum shortcomings for its performance. Unlike other UK telcos, he points out, it did not bid for 700MHz spectrum – good for wide-area coverage – when that came up in a government auction several years ago.

Instead, Vodafone has chosen to rely on 900MHz frequencies it already held, and those do not propagate as well, according to Kehoe. A merger with Three, which does have some 700MHz spectrum, "will play an important role in improving 5G coverage outcomes for Vodafone customers," he said in prepared remarks.

5G_availability_scores_in_UK.png

Yet both Vodafone and Three have also cut spending since they announced plans to merge. This was to be expected while they awaited a regulatory decision and the certainty it would bring, but it has inevitably had some impact on 5G deployment in the UK. Vodafone's capital expenditure fell 7% year-over-year for the first half of the current fiscal year (ending in March), to €355 million (US$370 million), and was 27% less than it spent in the final half of the previous year. Three's capex was down 16% for the first six months of 2024, to about £230 million ($286 million), compared with the year-earlier half.

But in the absence of much real competitive pressure on BT, there was some expectation Vodafone and Three would eventually be allowed to merge and constitute a far tougher rival. Conditional approval of the merger came in December, and the companies will not be forced to relinquish any frequency licenses or other assets, to BT's chagrin. Making a minimal or no effort to boost 5G availability would have been risky.

Standalone launch

This does not seem to be what happened, judging by Ookla's data. Intriguingly, the improvement that took place between September and December immediately followed BT's launch of a 5G standalone (SA) service across major UK towns and cities. Sometimes described as "real" or "true" 5G, this variant of the technology severs connections to the 4G core and for BT meant bringing new spectrum into 5G use, with coverage benefits.

"Today, on non-standalone, you have to connect via a 4G network to get the control plane working," Howard Watson, BT's chief security and networks officer, told Light Reading in September when the service was launched. "That's on 1800MHz in our network, which has limited indoor coverage, and now you can get the control plane and user plane over 700MHz, so you are going to get improved indoor coverage." Across 30,000 cells, portions of spectrum in the 700MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz, 2600MHz and 3.5GHz bands have been allocated to 5G SA.

Ookla's data showing the gap between BT and its competitors is a potential concern for regulatory authorities, worried about any perception the UK has become a single-player 5G market. The plan is to supervise Vodafone and Three after their merger and make sure they deliver on a promise to pump billions of pounds into 5G rollout. But it could be months before the deal finally goes through, and the amalgamation of two separate networks served by a jumble of vendors could present unforeseen challenges and costs. A gap that is still growing after consolidation would look very wrong indeed.

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Europe

About the Author

Iain Morris

International Editor, Light Reading

Iain Morris joined Light Reading as News Editor at the start of 2015 -- and we mean, right at the start. His friends and family were still singing Auld Lang Syne as Iain started sourcing New Year's Eve UK mobile network congestion statistics. Prior to boosting Light Reading's UK-based editorial team numbers (he is based in London, south of the river), Iain was a successful freelance writer and editor who had been covering the telecoms sector for the past 15 years. His work has appeared in publications including The Economist (classy!) and The Observer, besides a variety of trade and business journals. He was previously the lead telecoms analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and before that worked as a features editor at Telecommunications magazine. Iain started out in telecoms as an editor at consulting and market-research company Analysys (now Analysys Mason).

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