London's Mobile Network Only Ranked Fifth Across The UK

London has had to make do with the mobile industry’s version of a Europa League spot after RootMetrics’ latest set of data showed that it has only the fifth most reliable network of 16 cities across the UK.

RootMetrics first half 2014 Metro RootScore Reports showed that Liverpool polled an average weighted result of 92.5 with Manchester coming in second on 90.02, Coventry in third on 90.1 and Birmingham in fourth on 89.6.

London, meanwhile, scored just 88.8 in fifth place and much of this was down to its poor performance when it comes to calls that saw it take 14th place out of 16 cities tracked.

“Given its importance to the UK economy and our increasing reliance on mobile devices for commerce, it is a surprise that London did not come in first a single category and, overall, only came fifth,” explained RootMetrics CEO and President Bill Moore.

When it comes to mobile data, London does perform slightly better with a score of 87.42 giving it fourth place and Liverpool once again on top with 89.68. It’s a similar story in terms of calls with Liverpool came first on 94.52 and texts where 96.40 was enough for it to come out on top.

“The top performing metro areas of the UK are seeing huge competition between the network operators. We conduct large-scale studies on mobile network performance in each city to provide more depth and transparency around how the networks truly perform in each area,” Moore added.

RootMetrics came to its figures by averaging out RootScores for the first half of 2014 across EE, O2, Three and Vodafone, and then each city was given a weighted score based on the number of subscribers on each network compared to the performance.

Even if mobile networks aren’t at the top of the UK average, there is still Wi-Fi offered at London Underground stations and on buses in the city plus a proliferation of Wi-Fi hotspots means that even with a poor mobile signal it is easy to keep in touch.

Image Credit: Flickr (@Doug88888)