Rochdale has the best mobile internet service

Rochdale has the best mobile internet service

Rochdale has the best mobile internet service of Manchester and the surrounding area, with every network offering speeds of over 2.3 Mbps. Three in Rochdale hit 3.6 Mbps, 64% faster than its speed in Manchester itself.

Rochdale also thrashes Bury. Its mobile internet is 17% faster on download speeds, and calls from Rochdale fail just 3.0% of the time while Bury calls fail 5.7% of the time.

• Rochdale ties with Trafford as the best served of all the districts in terms of mobile internet speeds.
• Across the borough, the average call failure rate was 3.0%.
• Three was the fastest at mobile internet downloads at 3.0 Mbps, clearly beating everyone else. Vodafone came in second at 2.4 Mbps. O2 was slowest at 2.0 Mbps, or 33% slower than Three.
• On upload, Three again came in fastest at 1.6 Mbps. O2 came in third at 1.2 Mbps. Vodafone came in last at .8 Mbps, making Three twice as fast as Vodafone.

These contrasts underline that mobile coverage across the area and between operators is not equal. Three and Vodafone provide the best service overall on average scoring 84 and 81 respectively, with T-Mobile (91) and Three (91) drawing to offer the best service when it comes to calls. Vodafone (79) was deemed joint best with Three (76) when it comes to mobile internet. T-Mobile was the slowest network, offering download speeds of 1.5 Mbps. That means uploading a medium-sized photo to Facebook would take well over 25 seconds.

“Our testers covered more than eight hundred and thirty miles to deliver a highly accurate picture of mobile network performance in the area,” explains RootMetrics CEO and President Bill Moore. “Using our data, we’ve been able to show City-supporting areas get a raw deal compared to their United rivals. Overall, Three and Vodafone provide the best service across all of Greater Manchester, but T-Mobile is joint best with Three when it comes to call performance.

“With internet use soaring among mobile phone users, knowing that Vodafone and Three are both best for data and joint winners overall should be useful to local residents who may be thinking about changing mobile phone providers.”

Interestingly, when looking at call performance, it seems people are more likely to get through in the suburbs than the city – only 1.8% of calls in the surrounding towns were dropped or blocked, whereas 2.4% were in the city. This increases to 7.7% on commuter routes and almost 1 in every 13 calls can be expected to drop on the surrounding motorways.