All very good comments. If a network worked well for you in specific areas that matters to you it’s the best thing to go with.
I’m currently with 3 and admittedly it’s not very fast at all in terms of numbers but it’s extremely cheap at only £5/month as I’m often outside of the country and don’t mind paying such a small amount so that when I am back I don’t have to bother getting a SIM and paying a load for data.
i would like to create a vote thing on here to see who is with who and who is better
Check out rootmetrics for a map of coverage in different areas.
In terms of 5G coverage - I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say that all 4 networks will be rolling that out over the next few years and it’s just a case of where your area is in the priority list for how quickly you’ll be getting it.
However, for a ‘standard’ smartphone 5G doesn’t really bring you that much benefit other than getting ookla speed test screenshoots to impress your friends with. 5G benefits are really about things like being able to cut your cable/landline connection and run your whole household via 5G but even when 5G is rolled out fully, that’s unlikely to happen with the data caps on mobile connections.
I used o2 for a few years. They We’re generally ok but have some very patchy areas in central London with zero connection.
I switched to EE and their connection is solid everywhere I’ve tried (except immediately around Moorgate station where it totally drops, but I’m not there often).
One bonus of o2 is their Priority app, really handy if you buy gig tickets and it has loads of other offers all the time too. EE doesn’t really have anything like that, though occasionally they do have some offers show up - I got amazon prime video free for six months (though I paid for prime already anyway) or six months free Apple Music subscription and music streaming (Which was useful as I used it anyway and stream a lot of music).
I think they’re all pretty similar so it’ll come down to your preference and how good they are in the areas you live and work.
5G coverage is years away for most of the networks, so I’m not sure why that’s a factor right now. You can change closer to the actual launch times?
Check where you live/work/will use phone the most and go with that one. There are always deals so X can be cheaper than Y, but in the last 20 years it’s all pretty evened out for me.
I’ve been with all four of the ‘big’ carriers and each has their own foibles.
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Three are really good value for money, but they really struggle for network capacity, I quite often find myself in busy areas of central London having full signal but no usable data connection at all unless I switch down to HSDPA.
I wouldn’t say you should completely avoid them though, once people start switching to 5G the situation should improve dramatically but it’s probably still a year or two off.
I use Smarty which runs off the Three network and really love it. Great value (I pay £10 for unlimited calls, unlimited texts and 30gb data) and never have a problem with signal - can’t ask for more than that.
With 3 checkout this twitter:
https://twitter.com/three_is_broken?lang=en
Hate to say this but I cannot recommend 3 any more, used to get 50+ and was considering it as a home broadband which maxes out at 25 but it has dropped to near useless now.
Also, they can say they have the best 5G etc but “launching it” in the UK with each city get a postage sized stamp of 5G doesn’t count.
I also use a three sim in a 4g router, I used to get ~80mbps then it dropped to ~20 but now I’m getting 2-5mbps, shocking.
But looking through that twitter account it seems like alot of people have seen significant drops recently.
I’ve been wondering what has been going on with mine too, so I’m glad I’m not the only one. It was on my to do list to call them or do some further investigation.
Same setup and everything 
It’s got to be something to do with their new cloud core network,
I’m not even bothering to phone up as it’s a network wide issue and hopefully they’re on it already.
What’s weird is that YouTube etc will stream fine, check the stats for nerds and it shows streaming at 10-15mbps so there’s definitely some traffic throttling/shaping going on, or Google colo or peer better with three’s network.
Used EE for 5 years - very good network, best internet speeds.
Currently with Vodafone… not as good as EE but better than Three and O2 definitely…
Got 100 Mbps last week ( Voda 4G) near Leicester
EE is the best but barely over 20 in my local area, Got Voxi - Vodafone for a month (free with quidco) and that is barely 10, same as 3.
Was hoping to use one of them as a home broadband solution but the wait goes on. Hopefully by 2050 I might have FTTP and 5G - We don’t have Virgin either so stuck with FTTC at a max of 30.
I think it really seems to depend on your location but O2 have always had poor signal in my area. Where I live I get about 60down and 20 upload with Vodafone and 130down and 20 upload with Three. Recently moved back to Three from VOXI and haven’t had any complaints.
I believe 3 are doing some significant work recently - either that or they’ve had a sudden influx of new customers because network quality has been significantly degraded across the country in the last few months.
Have been on 3 for the past 10 year’s. It used to work a lot better when I lived outside of London, but now seems to massively suffer in any busy locations. It’s fine in zone 2, but horrendous in places like Oxford Circus, Bank, Piccadilly etc, where you can’t have more than a 30 second call without it being dropped. Don’t even mention internet speed…
It doesn’t bother me enough to switch though, and they are unbelievably cheap. It’s free to use your data in many countries outside of Europe as well, which I think is one of the main selling points.
This is often forgotten. They are also the only network (so far as I know) to commit to free roaming in the EU after the Brexit transition period ends.