Ofcom: EE best UK mobile operator for video streaming

EE is the leading UK mobile operator for watching YouTube content, according to new research by Ofcom.

The UK broadcast regulator’s Smartphone Cities report said that a test clip successfully streamed in high definition in 97% of attempts on EE’s 4G network, compared with 87% on Three, 86% on Vodafone and 85% on O2.

The video clip, which was the trailer for the James Bond film Spectre, failed to load at all on 7% of occasions on O2, while EE had the lowest failure rate, at 1%.

The Ofcom study, which was conducted in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London and Norwich, found EE led its competitors across a number of tests.

In terms of download speeds, EE was the fastest with an average speed of 20 Mbps on a 4G tariff, followed by Three at 15Mbps, Vodafone at 12Mbps and O2 at 10Mbps.

On average EE also had the most consistent 4G download speed performance. Speeds in excess of 2Mbps were delivered in 92% of tests, compared with 87% for Three, 82% for Vodafone and 69% for O2.

In addition, the BBC homepage loaded quickest on EE’s 4G network, taking five seconds compared with six seconds for all of the other operators.

“The UK is increasingly becoming a smartphone society, with 70% of all adults owning a smartphone, making the performance of mobile networks more important than ever,” said Ofcom.

Overall it said that 4G services provided faster download speeds than 3G services consistently and across all networks, with the average 4G download speed 17Mbps compared to 6Mbps for 3G technology.

The news comes a day after Ofcom revealed that BT was the most complained about pay TV service provider in the UK during  Q4 2015, receiving 15 complaints for every 100,000 pay TV customers compared to an industry average of just four.