EE has been crowned the top performing network provider across the whole of the UK.

The network provider received an award for top mobile performance in England, along with awards for Network Speed and Data Performance, however, Three took the title for reliability.

It also ranked top for Network Speed, Data and Text Performance across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, although it shared the title with Vodafone for Text Performance.

The results, which are based off data collected from RootMetrics 1H 2017 Mobile Network Performance in the UK report, highlight the performance across the four UK nations.

EE rivals Three and Vodafone followed close behind with Three ranked as the top overall operator in Scotland and Wales and Vodafone being crowned the overall winner and most reliable network in Northern Ireland.

Read more: EE boosts data speeds with 4G+ roll-out

The O2 network also delivered a good performance in Northern Ireland and received an award for shared text.

As the race to provide strong 4G coverage in the UK continues, the results show EE in the lead with its 4G offering which is available in England 91 percent of the time and 90 percent in Northern Ireland. Vodafone comes in second with 4G availability at 83 percent in England.

EE’s 4G services have become widely popular in the UK, especially since 2016 when the company extended its 4G+ network with a new technology that was built to boost the network capacity and deliver at an even faster speed to meet customer demand.

Scott Stonham, GM of Europe, RootMetrics said: These latest results have really shaken things up and show the increasing competitiveness in the UK, particularly over the last six months. EE continues to lead the way, but Three and Vodafone are close behind.

“What is clear is that each operator showed strong performance in at least one particular country, while nobody was able to sweep the board at the four-nations level. UK consumers have strong mobile options depending on how and where they use their devices most.”

In the run-up to 5G coverage, which is expected to become publicly available by 2020, advice has been given to UK providers to develop technologies which will provide lower latency and faster speeds to make the win as a leader in the market.

“With new UK spectrum allocations soon to be auctioned in the run up to 5G, these performance results provide a snapshot on the spectrum on the competitive balance between the UK mobile operators now, and highlight which operators most need to acquire new spectrum capacity if they are to be a future mobile performance winner,” said Ian Fogg, senior research director for mobile and telecom, HIS Markit.