The most granular, fully-measured mobile coverage checker in the UK and Ireland.
Every polygon is a 10-metre hexagon. Every reading is a real measurement taken by a NetworkUX kit on the ground — not a propagation model, not a crowdsourced sample, not an operator prediction. Every map shows signal strength and data performance together, on all four UK operators simultaneously. That’s how our customers find a not-spot inside a postcode, before the network operator does.
Eight things you won’t find together in any other coverage checker.
Plenty of tools claim to show mobile coverage. Most of them predict it from propagation models, summarise it at 50 m or 100 m resolution, or show one operator at a time. NetworkUX is built for the opposite: granular, measured, all four operators at once.
True street-level resolution
Every map cell is a 10-metre hexagon. Competitors use 50–100m cells. That’s the difference between “your borough” and “your street” — or, in many cases, your front door versus the corner.
No predicted coverage. No crowdsourced data.
Every polygon comes from a real measurement taken in a real place at a real time by a NetworkUX kit. We don’t use propagation models, we don’t use operator-supplied predictions, and we don’t use opportunistic crowdsourced samples.
Both layers, always.
Every NetworkUX deployment measures signal strength (dBm) and data performance (Mbps up and down) on every operator, at every point. Toggle between the two map layers with one click.
Server-side time excluded.
Our upload and download tests extract the server-side processing time from every measurement, so the speeds you see are true network file-transfer speeds — not a blend of network speed and the remote server’s response time.
Four maps. Same view. Same moment.
The default desktop layout shows EE, Vodafone, VMO2 and Three simultaneously in a 2×2 split. No flicking between tabs to compare; the differences jump out instantly.
Selectable visibility.
Five bands from Very Poor to Very Good, each individually toggle-able. Want to see only the Very Poor cells across a council area? One tick. Want to compare Good-or-better coverage? Same. Find what matters fast.
No padding the band ratings.
To attain a band rating, both the upload and download thresholds must be met. A 50 Mbps download with 0.05 Mbps upload is not “Very Good” in our scheme — it’s Very Poor on the upload side, and the band reflects the weaker number.
See street names under the polygons.
Need to read a specific street name through the colour layer? Drag the contrast slider to lighten the polygons. Want a starker visualisation for a council meeting? Slide the other way. Live, in the browser, no settings menus.
This is what the difference looks like at street level.
A live screenshot from the NetworkUX Coverage Checker, zoomed into the School Grove area of Manchester in Performance mode on Vodafone. Each hexagon is a single 10-metre cell, coloured by the actual download and upload speeds we measured there. Mobile performance — what users actually feel when they open an app — varies street-by-street and even building-by-building. A 100 m grid averages five bands of real-world experience into one colour. NetworkUX doesn’t.
The side-by-side view that no other checker offers.
The same School Grove area shown above — this time with all four UK operators rendered simultaneously in the default 4-up view. Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three each tested by the same kit, on the same routes, at the same time. The differences between operators on the same residential streets are instantly visible. You don’t switch tabs to compare; the comparison is the view.
Five bands, mapped to what people actually do on their phone.
Mobile data is only useful in the context of what it can do. Every NetworkUX Coverage Checker labels each band with the kinds of services it enables — from basic messaging at the bottom end through to 4K video and cloud gaming at the top. Both the upload and download thresholds must be met to attain a band; a fast download with a slow upload is rated by the weaker of the two.
Services cascade down the bands. A reading of Good enables HD streaming and video calls, plus everything the Fair, Poor and Very Poor bands enable.
And the same colour system on the signal-strength side.
Mobile signal strength is technically measured in decibel-milliwatts (dBm), but most people read it as bars on the phone. The five NetworkUX signal bands map both ways — from no bars at the bottom (worse than −120 dBm) to four-bar signal at the top (better than −85 dBm).
A useful pattern to look for: areas with Good or Very Good signal but Poor or Very Poor performance. That’s a capacity (congestion) problem, not a coverage problem — common in urban areas at busy times. The NetworkUX Coverage Checker is one of the only tools that lets you spot this directly.
NetworkUX versus the other tools your buyers might be looking at.
Three other categories of coverage checker exist in the UK: Streetwave (similar bin-lorry-based methodology), Ofcom’s “Map Your Mobile” (the regulator’s public-facing tool), and the operators’ own checkers (EE, Vodafone, O2, Three). Each has a place. Here’s a like-for-like comparison on the dimensions that affect the answers you can give your buyer.
| Feature | NetworkUX | Streetwave | Ofcom MYM | MNO checkers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution / display model | 10 m hexagons (H3 res 12) | Aggregated to street segments / per address | 50 m (100 m Vodafone) | ~100 m or coarser |
| Data source | Real measurements only | Real measurements | Predicted + crowdsourced | Predicted only |
| Signal strength (dBm) | Yes, every point | Yes | Yes (predicted) | Coarse band only |
| Data performance (Mbps) | Yes, every point | Yes | Limited | No (signal only) |
| Server-side time excluded from speeds | Yes | Not stated | N/A | N/A |
| All 4 UK operators side-by-side | Yes, 4-up split view | One at a time | One at a time | Single operator only |
| Selectable / toggleable bands | Yes, per band | Not stated | No | No |
| Polygon transparency control | Yes, live slider | Not stated | No | No |
| Independent of operators | Yes | Yes | Operator-supplied predictions | Operator self-report |
Streetwave is the closest equivalent to NetworkUX in data collection methodology — both companies use bin-lorry-hosted kits gathering real measurements. The difference is in how the data is displayed. NetworkUX renders every measurement on a continuous grid of 10 m hexagons (H3 resolution 12), showing coverage on every street, junction, square and gap between buildings. Streetwave’s public methodology describes an address-aggregated model: data is rolled up to the street where the residential address is found, with each address assigned a Streetwave Speed Score. For pinpointing not-spots between addresses, planning infrastructure on routes rather than at door numbers, or scoping EV-charge sites and event walking routes, the hexagon grid gives you the answer at the resolution the question actually needs.
Ofcom’s Map Your Mobile uses operator-supplied predicted coverage with crowdsourced data from Opensignal layered on top; it’s a useful national overview but isn’t built for street-level decisions. Operator checkers are predictions of the operator’s own coverage at coarse resolution — useful as a baseline, but not as a measure of what residents and visitors actually experience.
What council customers say after the data lands on the table.
Four direct quotes from three live UK council programmes — Westminster City Council, Manchester City Council and the Tees Valley Combined Authority (plus one of its constituent councils).
“The conversation with mobile-network operators has moved on a lot more. We know where the problem areas are. We can be constructive and collaborative about how we might be able to help them — our aim is to improve the user and visitor experience of people coming to Westminster.”
Head of Smart City, Westminster City Council
“Overall, the experience of working with the team at NetworkUX and the product delivered was exceptional in quality and delivery. I would recommend NetworkUX to any party interested in gathering data on mobile capacity.”
Senior Digital Strategy Officer, Manchester City Council
“Ever wondered why your apps won’t load despite full bars on your phone? That’s exactly what our new Mobile Performance Map is here to solve. It’s already highlighting where coverage is strong — and where it needs to improve — so we can work with providers to fill the gaps and make sure people get the service they pay for.”
Tees Valley Mayor
“We’re using our bin wagons to sort more than just our rubbish — we’re sorting rubbish signal out, too. No more guesswork — this will give us hard evidence of problems people who have poor signal know only too well, and arm us to go to providers and government to get it sorted.”
Leader, Darlington Borough Council
The same dataset, the same controls, on two live council areas.
Both checkers are public. Click around, switch between Performance and Signal, toggle bands on and off, drag the transparency slider, search a postcode. What you see is what every Inakalum customer gets — just scoped to their area.
The Coverage Checker is the public-facing layer. The survey is the evidence.
Behind every NetworkUX Coverage Checker is a multi-week or multi-month measurement programme. Customers commission the survey and the checker together — the survey gives them the dataset to work from internally, the checker gives them a public-facing tool they can point residents, members, operators or funders at.
Local authorities & councils
Publish a public-facing borough or council-area checker as the headline output of a multi-week mobile-coverage programme. Used today by Manchester City Council and the Tees Valley Combined Authority.
See more — for local authoritiesBIDs & place partnerships
BID-footprint connectivity data, packaged as a public-facing checker that town-centre members, levypayers and operators can all read.
See more — for BIDs & chambersEV charge-point operators
Site-by-site verification across all four UK networks before a single charger is ordered. The checker is the public-facing layer; the survey is the evidence.
See more — for EV charge-point operatorsMobile infrastructure providers
Multi-operator field data showing exactly where capacity gaps live. Neutral hosts, tower companies and small-cell operators use the checker to build commercial cases.
See more — for mobile infrastructureWant a public-facing Coverage Checker for your borough, BID, estate or rail corridor?
Tell us where you want surveyed, who you’d want to share the checker with, and what question you’re trying to answer. We’ll come back with a scoping proposal — survey window, deployment model, deliverable, public checker — usually within one working day.