UK's 'best' mobile network confirmed - where does your provider rank on the list?

UK phone owners wanting the best overall experience might want to switch to EE. The UK network has just been crowned the winner in the latest Ookla: RootMetrics tests, beating rivals such as Vodafone, Virgin Media O2 and Three to the top spot. According to the new stats, EE claimed the top spot across categories, including Reliability, Responsiveness, Speed, Data, Calls, Videos and Texts.

"EE continued to lead the way in 2025, winning or sharing every UK-wide RootScore during testing," Rootmetrics said.

"EE has won our UK Overall RootScore Award outright in every test period since 2H 2013, earning recognition as the UK’s best network for 12 years running."

Along with winning the most gongs once again, EE also scored the fastest UK-wide aggregate median download speed, at 110.8 Mbps.

At that rate, EE users could download a full HD movie to their phones in just 5 minutes.

As a quick comparison, Ookla: RootMetrics says Virgin Media O2 could only muster average speeds of 36.2Mbps whilst both Three and Vodafone both scored less than 50Mbps.

EE’s 5G network also impressed, with the operator winning the Best 5G Experience award thanks to its combination of widespread availability and strong performance.

Although EE has come out on top, Vodafone was a pretty close second, and Three came in third place.

"Vodafone posted strong results in our UK-wide testing, ranking second in seven out of eight categories.

Three again earned a share of the UK Text RootScore Award, and the operator’s rankings remained steady in every other category, with a second-place finish for Call Performance and third-place finishes in the remaining categories.

Although it came bottom overall, Virgin Media O2 earned a share of the UK Text RootScore Award, tying with EE and Three.

RootMetrics says it conducted over 625,000 tests to measure the real-world performance of mobile operators in the United Kingdom.

SEE THE FULL SCORES BELOW

EE

Overall - 93.2Reliability - 93.5Responsiveness - 93Speed - 90.8Data - 91.5Call - 98.6Text - 99.7

Video - 88.3

VODAFONE

Overall - 85.7Reliability - 86.5Responsiveness - 89.5Speed - 75.4Data - 82Call - 95.6Text - 98.6

Video - 85.7

THREE

Overall - 84.2Reliability - 85.3Responsiveness - 89.2Speed - 70.8Data - 79.7Call - 96.3Text - 99.2

Video - 83.5

O2

Overall - 80.1Reliability - 81.4Responsiveness - 87.7Speed - 63.5Data - 75.1Call - 92.8Text - 99.1

Video - 81.1