Vodafone iPhone users can claim the fastest download speeds in the UK according to new data revealed to Pocket-lint.

Following our own investigation into network quality and speed of the three official operators for the iPhone in London, the makers of Speed Check, the app that we used to test network speed, have sent us more figures from thousands of users across the nation using the iPhone app.

According to Speed Check's data, Vodafone comes out top when it comes to downloading data, followed by O2, followed by Orange.

Interestingly the company is also tracking plenty of speed checks by people on the 3 network, presumably on jail broken handsets. Including the 3 data into the listings and it actually beats O2 and Orange in performance when it comes to accessing data on the go.

It's not all good news for Vodafone though, with its average download speed coming bottom of the pile. Again including the 3 figures, the operator that doesn't officially stock the Apple phone comes out top followed by O2, followed by Orange and then Vodafone closely after.

In January Pocket-lint tested three handsets at the four stations and Apple's HQ in Regent Street in London carrying out a series of tests like downloading pages via the browser and making phone calls.

Speed Check, a free app for the iPhone allows users to check the download rate, ie how fast you are able to download data, as well as the upload rate, ie how fast you can request pages, upload messages to Twitter or send an email.

In our tests carried out at the beginning of January, based on the overall consistency of performance O2 won, followed by Vodafone, followed by Orange.

In the five tests we did with Speed Check, O2 had the best numbers overall in both upload and download speed, which also proved true in our real life tests of downloading the Pocket-lint homepage, accessing Google maps, streaming a YouTube video and making a phone call. 

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