Mobile Networks,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about mobile networks — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Three owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Three is the default answer.
Named in 92% of mobile networks answers, typically in position 2.6. EE follows at 63%, Vodafone at 63%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Three | 92% | 2.6 | 9% | 22% |
| 2 | EE | 63% | 2.3 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Vodafone | 63% | 3.1 | 14% | 13% |
| 4 | O2 | 58% | 3.6 | 14% | 20% |
| 5 | Smarty | 38% | 5.8 | 14% | 33% |
| 6 | Lebara | 32% | 6.0 | 0% | — |
| 7 | VOXI | 23% | 6.4 | 5% | 0% |
| 8 | Giffgaff | 23% | 6.5 | 0% | 0% |
| 9 | iD Mobile | 22% | 8.1 | 9% | 0% |
| 10 | Tesco Mobile | 17% | 7.9 | 5% | — |
| 11 | 1pMobile | 15% | 6.2 | 9% | 50% |
| 12 | Sky Mobile | 10% | 7.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Talkmobile | 10% | 7.0 | 5% | 33% |
| 14 | Lyca Mobile | 7% | 7.8 | 5% | — |
| 15 | Airalo | 5% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
The referees of mobile networks.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering mobile networks questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Smarty converts reads into citations. Vodafone doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Smarty converts 33% of reads; Vodafone just 13%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Three | 92% | 2.6 | 9% | 22% |
| 2 | EE | 63% | 2.3 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Vodafone | 63% | 3.1 | 14% | 13% |
| 4 | O2 | 58% | 3.6 | 14% | 20% |
| 5 | Smarty | 38% | 5.8 | 14% | 33% |
| 6 | Lebara | 32% | 6.0 | 0% | — |
| 7 | VOXI | 23% | 6.4 | 5% | 0% |
| 8 | Giffgaff | 23% | 6.5 | 0% | 0% |
| 9 | iD Mobile | 22% | 8.1 | 9% | 0% |
| 10 | Tesco Mobile | 17% | 7.9 | 5% | — |
| 11 | 1pMobile | 15% | 6.2 | 9% | 50% |
| 12 | Sky Mobile | 10% | 7.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Talkmobile | 10% | 7.0 | 5% | 33% |
| 14 | Lyca Mobile | 7% | 7.8 | 5% | — |
| 15 | Airalo | 5% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
All three models agree: Three.
A rare consensus — every model puts Three first, and their top-five lists overlap 100%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O2 | 50% | 80% | 45% | 35pp |
| Vodafone | 60% | 80% | 50% | 30pp |
| EE | 60% | 80% | 50% | 30pp |
| Giffgaff | 30% | 35% | 5% | 30pp |
| Tesco Mobile | 5% | 35% | 10% | 30pp |
| iD Mobile | 5% | 35% | 25% | 30pp |
| Three | 75% | 100% | 100% | 25pp |
| Lebara | 20% | 45% | 30% | 25pp |
| Smarty | 35% | 50% | 30% | 20pp |
| VOXI | 15% | 35% | 20% | 20pp |
How-to guides carry mobile networks.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; How-to guides convert best — 75% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 51 | 17 | 75% |
| Comparisons | 24 | 21 | 53% |
| Editorial | 8 | 18 | 31% |
| pricing | 6 | 6 | 50% |
| Product pages | 5 | 10 | 33% |
| Other | 3 | 28 | 10% |
| Community threads | 1 | 26 | 4% |
| Documentation | 1 | 11 | 8% |
Named author is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the mobile networks pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Named author is worth 26 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 16pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Named author | 91 | 57% | 201 | 31% | +26pp |
| Specifications | 26 | 50% | 266 | 38% | +12pp |
| Comparison table | 64 | 47% | 228 | 37% | +10pp |
| Updated this year | 70 | 43% | 222 | 38% | +5pp |
| Answer up front | 134 | 42% | 158 | 37% | +4pp |
| Hard statistics | 86 | 28% | 206 | 44% | -16pp |
Three builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Set against how often those pages are actually cited.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three | 33 | 67% | 3 |
| 1pMobile | 29 | 67% | 3 |
| EE | 27 | 20% | 15 |
| Vodafone | 23 | 29% | 7 |
| Smarty | 21 | 43% | 7 |
| Talkmobile | 13 | 33% | 3 |
| O2 | 11 | 23% | 13 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions mobile networks pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:35:02 GMT.