The four operators in the UK, Vodafone, Orange, O2, and T-Mobile, were asked to make over 20,000 test phone calls between October 2001 and March 2002 across nine different regions of the country, including Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and six areas of England. A successful call consisted of setting up and holding a call for at least two minutes, although audio quality was not a consideration.
Of all the operators in the UK, Orange was found to be the most reliable network with 97.8% of calls made being connected and completed without a break. Vodafone came second with a 97.5% success rate, O2 came in third with 97.3% and T-Mobile took last place with 95.1% reliability.
Consumers can find the survey results on the Oftel website, which will give them a better idea of which operator to go for in their specific region. For example, although Orange came top overall, users in Scotland could be better off subscribing to Vodafone.
There are currently 46 million mobile phone users in the UK, all of whom could benefit from these survey results when next choosing network operators.
