This week UK regulator Ofcom has released on its website, downloadable maps of the 5 major UK cellular network’s 3G cellular coverage. While Ofcom makes all sorts of provisos about its maps, they clearly show that the 3 network is the most dense and that Orange is right behind it, with leading incumbents O2 and Vodafone, as well as T-Mobile all showing patchy coverage. (See PDF version for pictures of maps).
In a way it is understandable that 3 has the best 3G network, because all of the others can fall back to a prior GSM network, but as more and more people are expecting high data performance from mobile broadband (which you can’t get on GSM), these maps will have to change, and it shows that O2 and Vodafone, two of the richest cellular operators, have the most investment still to make.
The maps don’t go into any detail and Ofcom says you cannot zoom down and look as specific streets or villages, and neither do they show what capacity is available at these locations, or how many concurrent data streams they may support ‘ but they should give a guide to how well the networks will perform and more importantly how close each operator is to its service obligations. The purple shading is where the operators meet their minimum service obligation for at least 50% of the time.
The coverage was calculated as outdoor, not indoor coverage and was where an ITU modeling tool predicts that the primary Common Pilot Channel signal exceeded -110dBm.